Cage House

"There are far too many things in this world scarier than Ghosts." Gao Ming took out a few banknotes. "Could you take us to have a look at your home in a little while?"

"I could, but my place is a bit small." The Middle-Aged Woman looked at the money, then at Yan Hua, seeming hesitant.

"You two stay in the restaurant." Gao Ming asked Yan Hua and Zhu Miaomiao to remain downstairs. Noticing that the Middle-Aged Woman had ordered wonton noodles but hadn't eaten them, he called to the server again. "Bring this table two more bowls of noodles."

"No, no." The Middle-Aged Woman waved her hands repeatedly. "My family doesn't eat wonton noodles. I'm taking these back for someone else."

Since she insisted, Gao Ming didn't dwell on it. Once Xuan Wen arrived, the two of them took Wan Qiu along and followed the Middle-Aged Woman out.

"Just call me Fat Sister-in-Law. The Sishui Street Apartments have four buildings in all—A, B, C, and D. I live in Building B." Holding her child, the Middle-Aged Woman began to complain. "There are passages inside connecting the buildings. We never used to have to take such a long way around. You could go straight in through Building A, but not anymore."

"Why?"

"All of Building A has been sealed off. Apparently, even the few households still living there have been relocated. It's an empty building now." The Middle-Aged Woman rocked her body, soothing the child in her arms. "If you ask me, those people are all sick in the head! What Ghosts? Making such a fuss over some stupid little thing. If they've got that much time and energy, they should hurry up and approve the fast-track public housing applications for poor people. Even living in a haunted home is better than being out on the street!"

"Building A has been cleared out?" According to the information Gao Ming had found on Bai Xiao's computer, the anomaly event had first appeared in one of the homes in Building A.

"There weren't many households in Building A to begin with. The day before yesterday, some strange people came to our Building B too, hoping we'd leave as soon as possible." The Middle-Aged Woman carried her child and the wontons. "Honestly, life just keeps getting harder. And the worst part is, you don't even know why it's so hard."

Walking along the long-neglected Sishui Street, their feet navigating the uneven pavement, they avoided the sealed-off Building A and approached the Sishui Street Apartments through another entrance.

Even without going inside, merely standing outside the building made Gao Ming deeply uncomfortable. It felt as though a layer of sticky shadow had coated his body, and the temperature kept dropping.

Wan Qiu, who was following behind, even reached out and grabbed Gao Ming's and Xuan Wen's sleeves. He stopped in his tracks, unwilling to go any farther.

The nine-story apartment building was painted pale yellow. Perhaps it had once been filled with laughter, but now thick grime covered the paint, and every household had security grilles installed, like so many rusty iron cages.

Looking up, the entire building gave off an indescribably oppressive feeling. Just standing beneath it felt suffocating, let alone living inside it all the time.

"Why did you stop?" The Middle-Aged Woman held her child. They seemed long accustomed to this place. "There's quite a lot of clutter in the corridors. Watch your step when you come through."

The Sishui Street Apartments were enormous. They had been built in the East District decades earlier specifically to house large numbers of people arriving from elsewhere. Every floor had long corridors, with homes lining both sides.

But a single room here didn't necessarily house just one household. Inside each room, partitions and wire mesh divided the space into separate sections. Some rooms housed as many as three families.

Migrant workers from every corner of the country crowded into these narrow, cramped spaces. Their jobs, ways of life, and even accents were completely different, so arguments and clashes were inevitable.

"Live somewhere like this long enough, and even a healthy person will end up sick." Gao Ming walked to the end of the corridor and opened a window. From here, he could see the neighboring apartment building.

It was utterly silent, without the slightest sign of life.

Gao Ming's gaze shifted. Just as he was about to turn away, something suddenly caught the corner of his eye.

He whipped his head around. Inside the opposite apartment building, what looked like a family of four stood side by side at a window, all watching him with the same expression.

The clothes those four wore were very different from current fashions. One of them was an elderly person whose mouth seemed to be bleeding.

"That's Building A over there." The Middle-Aged Woman ducked past the laundry hanging overhead and came over. "Building A and Building B used to be connected. You could go straight across through the corridors, but not anymore."

She pointed to a concrete wall at the corner. "Years ago, the residents blocked the passages with concrete, leaving only two routes, on the fifth and ninth floors. But now the police have sealed those off too. I think they've even put up police tape."

"The fifth and ninth floors..." Gao Ming looked toward Building A again, but the family of four had vanished.

"You'd better stay away from these concrete walls. I heard the old residents say that a murderer once hid bodies inside them after killing people. There might be a corpse's face right behind the spot you're touching." The Middle-Aged Woman motioned for Gao Ming to follow. "There are two stairways in the building, one on the left and one on the right. The elevator's been out of service for years. It's best not to use the left stairway. Some residents don't want to go to the communal toilets on the left side of the corridor at night, so they just relieve themselves in the stairwell."

When they reached the fifth floor, the Middle-Aged Woman deliberately made her footsteps heavy, as though announcing her return to certain "things."

She set her child down, spent a long time looking for her keys, then slowly opened the security door painted bright red.

"Welcome, welcome."

Looking inside, Gao Ming finally understood why the Middle-Aged Woman hadn't wanted Yan Hua to come. The home, only a little over thirty square meters, was packed with all kinds of belongings.

Adults' and children's shoes were piled high together. The cabinet against the wall had had its doors removed and was crammed with all sorts of things: a rice cooker, workbooks, schoolbags, and a huge heap of miscellaneous items wrapped in plastic supermarket bags.

Opposite the wardrobe stood a metal bunk bed. Clothes were stuffed at its foot, and the bedding was heaped together, marked with yellowish-brown stains.

The gap between the metal bed and the cabinet was only wide enough for an adult to squeeze through sideways. A huge stuffed doll had also been wedged between the foot of the bed and the corner of the cabinet.

The metal bed shook as two children, four or five years old, poked their heads out from the top bunk when they saw their mother return. They seemed shy around strangers and didn't dare climb down.

"Stop playing. We have guests." The Middle-Aged Woman poured the wonton noodles into a bowl. Strangely, she neither ate them herself nor gave them to the children. She merely set them on a chair, then dragged the chair into the middle of the room.

The children looked longingly at the wonton noodles but didn't dare say anything.

"Sit wherever you like." With that, the Middle-Aged Woman headed into another room.

The outer room was where they ate and slept. Conditions in the little compartment inside were even worse. The stove and sink sat right beside the toilet; the kitchen and bathroom occupied the same space.

Cooking oil and grimy bottles of seasonings shared a shelf with large containers of shampoo and cheap laundry powder. Yellow hair clippings, rotten vegetable leaves, and greasy sludge clogged the drain in the tiled floor.

"There isn't even anywhere to sit, is there?" Gao Ming edged farther inside. The Middle-Aged Woman kicked the children's toys out of the way, barely making enough room for them to enter.

"Look anywhere in the East District. Apart from Building A of the Sishui Street Apartments, you probably won't find a place that offers better value than mine."

"This isn't about value for money right now." Gao Ming noticed that something was very wrong with Wan Qiu. The high school boy's body was twitching slightly. "You said you live in a haunted home. What happened here before?"

The Middle-Aged Woman didn't seem worried about frightening her own children. "A man hanged himself here. Before he died, he took his two children with him," she said casually.

Hearing that made even Gao Ming feel uneasy, but neither the Middle-Aged Woman nor the two children on the metal bed showed any reaction.

"Lots of places in the Sishui Street Apartments are haunted homes. Some are even in high demand, because they're cheap." The Middle-Aged Woman had her own theory. "Actually, living next door to a haunted home is the worst. Not only does it cost more, but if Ghosts really do show up, the neighbors won't be able to escape either."

As she said this, her eyes flicked left, and her lips twisted slightly. She had unconsciously glanced at the cloth doll in the corner.

From her facial expression, Gao Ming could tell that she was hiding something. It wasn't that she had no fear of death. Rather, she seemed to know the Ghost wouldn't kill her.

"Let's... let's go..." Wan Qiu, who rarely spoke, tugged at Gao Ming's clothes, trying with all his strength to pull him outside.

Xuan Wen's reaction was a little strange too. She tapped Gao Ming on the shoulder and silently headed out, without a trace of a smile on her face.

"Leaving already? You've paid. Why not stay a little longer?" The Middle-Aged Woman gripped the security door and slowly pushed it more than halfway shut, blocking the doorway herself.

"We'll go look somewhere else first." Gao Ming said goodbye to the Middle-Aged Woman. As his gaze shifted away, he caught sight of a huge stuffed doll crawling across the filthy, cluttered floor behind her.

(End of chapter)