Chapter 24

On Saturday evening Gouwa crept into Ning Shu's room and asked her under his breath, "Sis, are you really not going?"

Ning Shu said, "I'm not going."

That night, once everyone was asleep, Ning Shu got up quietly and put the Heavenly Master's seal, her compass, the peachwood sword her grandmother had given her and a thick wad of paper charms into her bag.

She had no idea what this haunted house of theirs actually was, so she had to be ready for anything.

She opened her door carefully and slipped out.

It was nearly eleven. The lights go out early in the country, and everything around her was black and silent. Ning Shu got out her small torch and set off along the dark hill road.

There was a noise behind her. Ning Shu swung the torch round and a shape went past through the thick grass.

Ning Shu lowered the torch and said flatly, "Come out."

A few minutes later Gouwa backed out of the grass rump first and looked at her, aggrieved. "My own sister."

Ning Shu said, "Cousin."

"Liar."

Ning Shu gave it up. "You can come if you like. Just don't wet yourself when you're frightened."

"As if. I'm Aunt Hu Ying's own grandson. I'm Ye Yingjun and I've seen a thing or two."

Ning Shu let the boasting go past her. She got her phone out, opened Future Live and tapped to start.

The screen jumped to the front camera.

Everything around them was black, so there was almost nothing of either of them to see.

Gouwa asked, "Sis, what are you doing?"

"Streaming."

"What's that?"

"Sharing what we're doing with people on the internet."

"They can see whatever we do?"

"Yes."

Gouwa said, "Wow. So if I go and pee in the field they can see that too?"

Ning Shu: …

"Oh! Two people have come in." Gouwa shouted. "Somebody's here!"

Then the comments started.

Why is it so dark?

What kind of stream is this?

Can't see a thing. Where's the streamer?

Ning Shu was a little nervous. She cleared her throat and said brightly, "Hello, everyone. My name's Ningning, and I'm taking you all to a house that's supposed to be haunted. We're going ghost-hunting."

Ooh, exciting.

Are there really ghosts?

It's fake.

Ning Shu said, "I don't know whether there are ghosts either. That's why we're going to look."

Then Gouwa switched his torch on, and the beam came up at Ning Shu's face from below, white as a corpse, and it made the whole room jump.

What was THAT?

You scared the life out of me.

So this ghost-hunting stream is the streamer putting on a show, is it?

The streamer's only a little kid. She's sweet.

"Er, sorry. It was too dark before, so you couldn't see."

All right, all right, get going.

I can't wait.

Saved you, Ningning!

Ning Shu followed the map location Wang Yucheng had sent her and set off with Gouwa towards the haunted house in town.

It was a black five-storey block in the residential quarter in the southeast of the town, put up in the nineties, very old and never done up. There were other blocks packed in around it, and all of them had been emptied, so for all the buildings there was not one household living there. The whole quarter had become a dead zone with nobody in it.

The reason everyone moved out, they said, was that five-storey block.

People who moved into it sometimes vanished, for no reason anyone could give.

At first it did not get about much. One went missing, then another, and nobody paid it any mind. Then the numbers went up.

One wife who lived in that block said her husband got up in the night to use the lavatory and never came back, as though he had gone out of the world, and the police could do nothing.

And the strangest part was that she never heard the front door open. Which meant her husband had gone missing inside the flat.

It had happened more than once or twice. Nearly every household in that block lost somebody, and the ones left alive all moved out, and the people around them went too. They were all afraid of that building, and afraid that one day they would vanish like the rest.

In time it became the ghost block. They said a woman could be heard crying in there at night, and voices talking.

The stories about the place had gone all round the town, each one taller than the last, and how much of it was true and how much was not was anybody's guess.

Ning Shu gave the room a quick account of the building and the stories about it, and by now there were getting on for a hundred and something people in there.

God, I want to get inside and look.

It looks grim round there. I'm frightened.

Ningning, you've got some nerve.

Ning Shu thought, if she had no tools she would hardly have taken the job on.

Ning Shu and Gouwa walked towards the block. There was no wind that night and no moon and no street lights, and you could not see far. The building stood on its own in the open ground, and the look of it was not good.

By a wall not far off Ning Shu saw Wang Yucheng and Wei Xiaotian. The two of them had plainly never been here before either. Wei Xiaotian's teeth were already chattering, and Wang Yucheng was working at looking calm. He said to Ning Shu, "I thought you weren't going to dare."

Gouwa said, "Why wouldn't we dare? My sister's going to be a great master one day."

Ning Shu turned the camera on Wang Yucheng and Wei Xiaotian and explained, "These are my cousin's classmates. They're coming into the block with me."

Wang Yucheng asked, "What's that you're doing?"

Ning Shu said, "Streaming."

"What's that?"

Gouwa put both hands on his hips. "Ignorant. Doesn't even know what streaming is."

Ning Shu rolled her eyes. Half an hour ago you didn't know either, and now you're showing off about it.

Wang Yucheng said, "Go on then, explain it to me."

Gouwa thought about it and said, "It's where other people can see whatever you do, and you can pee at them."

Wang Yucheng: …

Ning Shu: …

Wang Yucheng gave up on Gouwa and said to Ning Shu, "We go up together and then split. Wei Xiaotian and I take the third floor, you two take the fourth. We meet downstairs in half an hour. You have to stay in the building the full half hour. First one out loses."

"Fine."

Wang Yucheng and Wei Xiaotian went up to the third floor first. Wei Xiaotian's teeth were chattering and he had a death grip on Wang Yucheng's clothes. "Cheng, do we have to go up?"

Wang Yucheng gave him a look of contempt. "What are you afraid of?"

"The place is haunted."

"She isn't afraid, so we won't be either. Don't forget she's going to the fourth floor."

"What's wrong with the fourth floor?"

"Four sounds the same as death."

Wei Xiaotian did not know what to say to that. "I think the two of us might go before she does."

"Get off. Stop saying unlucky things."

Wang Yucheng got to the third floor. The corridor was empty and black and he could see nothing. The doors faced each other down both sides, some open and some shut, and the whole of it was dead.

Wang Yucheng said, "We'll find a flat and sit tight, and go down when the half hour's up."

"All right. Whatever you say."

There was still furniture in the flat, only the things on the table and in the cupboards had been turned over, as though thieves had been through them.

Wei Xiaotian shut the door behind him as he came in and felt along the wall for the light switch and pressed it, and nothing came on.

Wang Yucheng went and sat down on the sofa and got his phone out to play a game, and said, "The power's been off in this block for years."

Wei Xiaotian stopped wandering about and went and sat down next to Wang Yucheng, and said shakily, "Cheng, where do you think all those missing people went? Are they still alive?"

"The police can't make head or tail of it. How would I know?"

Wei Xiaotian got his own phone out and started a game to take his mind off it. In the dark the two screens gave off a faint glow.

After a while Wei Xiaotian asked, "Cheng, do you think there really are ghosts in the world?"

Wang Yucheng said, "Ghosts nothing. It's all tricks to frighten people."

"But Ye Yingjun's grandmother really is a good feng shui master. My dad had her out to look at our plot, and she was right about everything."

"Huh. If a con artist couldn't put on a show, how would they make any money? And the lot of you believe it. You're fools."

"Oh." Wei Xiaotian nodded and felt a bit better. As long as there were no ghosts in the world he had plenty of nerve.

"Cheng, I need a pee."

"Go and find the lavatory."

"I don't dare." Wei Xiaotian said shakily, "I'm frightened."

"Look at the state of you. Look round the flat, go anywhere you like, just keep away from me."

Wei Xiaotian got up and went round the flat, and in the end decided to use the lavatory after all. He could not do it in the room with Wang Yucheng there.

The lavatory was off the sitting room and not far. Wei Xiaotian went in and lifted the lid. The pan had dried out long ago and there was no smell.

Soon the sound of it came through the door, and Wang Yucheng thought, God, he must have been holding that in for hours.

"Cheng, you've come in as well. I haven't finished. Go out and wait for me. I can't go with you watching."

Wei Xiaotian's voice came out of the lavatory.

Wang Yucheng put his phone down and shouted back, irritated, "I'm still out here. Nobody's bloody watching you."

Wei Xiaotian went rigid all over.

He turned his head slowly, and behind him there was a black shape covered in hair.

---

Ning Shu went up the stairs with the phone in one hand and Gouwa's hand in the other.

The camera was on the front lens, and by the light of the torch you could just make out how far gone the building was.

At the third floor Gouwa put his head round into the corridor and called Wang Yucheng's and Wei Xiaotian's names, and nobody answered him.

Gouwa said, "You don't think those two have run off?"

Ning Shu did not mind either way. She had not come here to win a bet with a pair of small boys. She had come to find out what was in the place, and to see how the streaming went.

As they reached the fourth floor there was a clear figure 4 on the wall, and Gouwa shivered and took a tight hold of her coat.

The room was nearly full now.

Three minutes to midnight.

Two minutes.

One minute.

I'm so nervous.

Wait. I think I just saw a black shape go past up ahead.

God. Really?

I swear.

Ning Shu swung the torch over where they meant. There was a heap of rubbish piled in the corner, and no black shape anywhere.

Gouwa said, "Sis, are we going in?"

Ning Shu looked at the door standing open in front of them, as though it were welcoming them in. The room beyond was dim, with the black outlines of furniture just showing.