Chapter 1. Case 1: 3 a.m

Probably many people have had the following similar experience.

Even though my family lives on the top floor, I always occasionally hear the sound of marbles falling on the ground, or the sound of someone walking. Of course, it is more common not to be a penthouse resident. Or, I was staying at home for a good time, and suddenly there was a knocking sound, and I found that it was coming from the wall after careful identification, and it was possible that the outside of the wall was directly the outer wall of the unit building.

This is a very common phenomenon, some of which are related to supernatural phenomena, but on the other hand, it must also be taken into account that the house partition is mildew, or caused by thermal expansion and contraction, and even if it is really because of supernatural phenomena, it is mostly harmless, and the type of play is gone.

But if it's not the ceiling or the wall that makes the sound, but the bed you have to sleep in every night, will you still be able to sleep?

On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2010, Hu Zongren and I rushed back to Chongqing from Chengdu, and we talked very little along the way, thinking about our own things. I don't know if Hu Zongren will regret it because of his arrogance, I only know that Lu Dao has never regretted selling medicine in this world. My parents have been educating me since I was a child, I should be cautious in making friends, and knowing Hu Zongren should be the most typical mistake in my life.

After we returned to Chongqing, the first three days were uneventful, but it was precisely this calm before the storm that made people restless. On the fourth day, Hu Zongren called me, and the first thing he said on the phone was that there was a call from Chengdu, and he asked me to wait for a woman to call me, saying that this was the first case in the 24 cases, but it had not yet called. I said I didn't call you to tell me anything, this thing was originally caused by your kid, and now Zhilu Dao is nervous, right? After all, it's a buddy, he's not nervous, I can hear it as soon as I hear it. Hu Zongren said, don't you just hang up the phone and tell you, this case that Xuanyuan will find is specifically aimed at me, and it won't be easy to handle. I scolded you for knowing that it was not good for you to be a strong man at the beginning, and now it's too late to say anything, you wait for the woman to call you. With that, I hung up the phone.

After about 20 minutes, Hu Zongren called me again and said that he had received the call, and it was indeed the first case to be introduced, as Xuanyuan would say. I said that the other party had encountered something, and he said that I didn't ask, so I asked for an address, and I rushed over later. I said, "Did you agree as soon as someone called, and you didn't even know the basic situation?" He said hesitantly, panicked all of a sudden, didn't think about it so much, and agreed. I was really too lazy to scold him anymore, so I asked him, where is the place, Hu Zongren said that it is not far from you, in Renhe.

So I made an appointment with a meeting place, and I drove to Renhe when Hu Zongren was almost there. Renhe is a place name, and when Jiangbei District and Yubei District were not under construction and development, it was just a small town. It's just that because the scale of the city is getting bigger and bigger, Yuzhong District, Jiangbei District, and Yubei District have been connected, and high-rise buildings have been built, and this person and town have also been developed and built. Because of this place name, there have been many jokes. For example, there is a pig breeding center in Renhe Town, whose full name is "Human and Pig Breeding Center". There are a lot of jokes like this, but people and I am deeply impressed, there is another place, that is, there is a bean curd rice called "floating on the water" on the old street, bean curd is different from other stores, his bean curd is like a layer of soup floating on the water, directly with chopsticks can not be clamped, you have to use a colander to drain, and this oil dish is also quite chic, chopped green pepper fried oil poured on, and then sprinkled with some white sesame seeds and green onions, dipped in bean curd and put in the mouth for a sip, the mouth is full of the deliciousness of the seasoning and the aroma of bean curd, I can consume an entire bowl of rice just by eating condiments. So when I came to Renhe and this place, the first thing I decided was to have a bowl of water floating when it came out!

After Hu Zongren arrived, we found the owner's house according to the address he said. This is a newly built community, and it is developed and built by a well-known real estate developer in Chongqing, high-rise, and this employer lives on the 15th floor in the middle. When we couldn't find our way between the buildings in the community, which looked similar, Hu Zongren called his employer, and as soon as the other party heard that we had arrived, he hurried downstairs and picked us up.

This is a woman who looks about my age, quite young. But dressing up is a bit like a stay-at-home wife. The appearance looks very beautiful, a typical Chongqing beauty, but she looks a little haggard, it should be related to what happened to me this time, for so many years, I have indeed rarely met the kind of person who can sleep peacefully after hitting a ghost. This woman's surname is Qi, so Hu Zongren and I call her Miss Qi.

Miss Qi took us upstairs, first very enthusiastically poured ice juice for the two of us, this community is a famous property, so the price should not be cheap, and after entering the house, judging from the decoration of their house, the family's economic conditions are relatively rich. Miss Qi smiled and said to us, "Which of you two is Teacher Hu?" Hu Zongren raised his hand like a primary school student being named by a teacher, and Miss Qi smiled awkwardly and said, In the phone before, you didn't let me tell you about the situation, so you came to the door, it's really troublesome for you. Hu Zongren changed his appearance in the past, and said very seriously, it's okay, it's a matter of time or time anyway, just tell us about the situation you encountered.

Miss Qi put down her cup in her hand, and then said that since almost a month ago, there have always been some inexplicable noises in her house, and sometimes the water cup on the dining room table was originally put by herself. Miss Qi said, you know, there have been frequent earthquakes in recent years, after the 08 years, everyone will be more prepared, so I thought it was an earthquake but I didn't feel anything, even if it was a nearby construction site to fire a cannon or something, I should be able to hear the sound, this cup fell inexplicably, and other vases on the same table or something were still good, which was very strange.

Miss Qi said that she didn't care about it at first, and the broken cup only happened once, and she thought it was broken, but later, after she was busy at home at night, she sat in front of the computer in the study and planned to watch a movie on the Internet or something, and after opening the computer, she found that there were some strange things on the desktop, most of them were clipboards, and she opened it to see that it was full of messy symbols, and she was very sure that these characters were not typed by herself. Although she thought it was strange, she also thought that it might be some kind of computer virus or something, but she still didn't care. What really caught her attention was that about a week after the cup was broken, she washed her face before going to bed at night, and when she looked in the mirror in the bathroom, the mirror suddenly broke and collapsed, which scared her a lot, and when she was still thinking about whether the weather was too hot and the quality of the mirror was problematic, the fluffy slippers she was wearing under her feet inexplicably ooped some water.

As she said this, she took another sip of her cup as if she were in shock. Hu Zongren looked at Miss Qi's feet, and I followed his gaze, and sure enough, Miss Qi was wearing a pair of fluffy slippers, which usually come in handy in my house in November. Hu Zongren said, on this hot day, how can you wear wool shoes? Miss Qi explained that she is cold, and her feet are easy to get cold no matter what season she is, but she is just used to it. Hu Zongren said, at that time, you said that shoes come out of the water, are they such shoes? Miss Qi said yes. Hu Zongren asked again, did you break the mirror and step on the water on the ground when you retreated? Miss Qi said of course not, her bathroom is relatively large, in order to prevent the water in the bathtub from overflowing outside the bathroom, a small partition was specially built to block water, so the floor of the washing area is very dry. Hu Zongren nodded, and asked Miss Qi to continue, Miss Qi said that after the shoes came out of the water, she began to notice that this was really a little wrong, but she had no other good way, she could only be a little more careful, and nothing else could be done. But from that night on, almost every night, when she slept until about 3 a.m., she would be woken up by a strange noise.

Miss Qi said, that sound, in fact, is not big, first, she is a person who is easy to wake up, and second, no matter how small the voice is in the quiet night, it is easy to hear in the ears of high-rise residents. She said the sound he heard seemed to be all around him, and at first he couldn't tell where it came from, the sound of a coin or other sharp object scraping on a wooden board. Hu Zongren reached out to the area of wood on the coffee table, scraped it with his fingers, and asked Miss Qi if it was such a sound, Miss Qi said that it was similar, but it sounded very obvious at night. With the previous encounter in the bathroom, Miss Qi began to be afraid, and recited Amitabha Buddha with her eyes closed, and the voice gradually disappeared after chanting for a long time, but she couldn't sleep anymore from that time.

I asked Miss Qi, what about your husband? That's my guess, based on her age, she should be married. But judging from what she said, it seems that when all this happened, there was no one at home. But there is an ashtray on the coffee table, and there are people in the house who want to smoke on the surface, but there are no cigarette butts in the ashtray, and there are dry water stains, indicating that this ashtray has not been used for many days. So I guessed that she must have a man in the family, but I don't know why the man has not been here.

When Miss Qi heard me ask, she was stunned for a moment, probably because she didn't understand why I suddenly asked this, so she said to me that my husband works in the field and is not often at home. I said, didn't you tell your husband about all this after all this happened? She said she had called, but her husband said she was suspicious and didn't take it seriously.

I glanced at Hu Zongren and thought, I'm afraid your husband will have to start taking it seriously.