Even as Ning Qiushui spoke, he noticed something. After some rummaging, he pulled several pieces of meat out of the refrigerator.
They were vacuum-packed, without any labels.
Inside... every one of them, without exception, held something blackish.
But with so much crushed ice, the two of them couldn't make out what it was.
So Ning Qiushui handed the frozen blocks to Liu Chengfeng.
"Cut one open. Let's have a look."
Liu Chengfeng took out a knife and slit open the vacuum bag—then abruptly froze rigid.
"Holy hell..."
Staring at the meat inside the bag, he couldn't hold back the curse.
What the vacuum bag held was a piece of meat covered in thick hair!
From the placement of the hair, it came from a leg... and the leg was human!
"This—this fucking bag is holding... is holding human flesh?!"
Liu Chengfeng flung the meat away in terror.
The frozen-solid block struck the floor with a crisp crack.
He suddenly remembered the meat they had all eaten, and began to retch.
Liu Chengfeng knew perfectly well that what he'd eaten really had been beef—and still his stomach heaved.
Ning Qiushui picked the meat up off the floor, examined it carefully, and finally slipped it back into its bag.
"I think I know now why the old lady on the second floor won't eat meat..."
Beside him, Liu Chengfeng had only just fought down the urge to vomit. His face pallid, he asked:
"Why?"
Ning Qiushui said slowly:
"Because before us, someone fed the old lady this meat—and it left her with a severe psychological trauma toward meat..."
"And don't you find it strange?"
Liu Chengfeng knitted his brow:
"Find what strange?"
Ning Qiushui wrapped the meat back up and stuffed it into the refrigerator.
"The old lady is already paralyzed—and yet the windows of her room are nailed over with steel bars, as if someone were terrified she might escape..."
Liu Chengfeng thought it over carefully—and it really was so.
And hard on the heels of that, an icy cold swept through his whole body, as if he had grasped something dreadful...
"You mean—the old lady's paralysis..."
Ning Qiushui's gaze was razor-keen. He nodded.
"Very possibly."
"But that's not the frightening part. The truly frightening thing... comes after."
He picked a cut of lean lamb out of the refrigerator and tossed it to Liu Chengfeng.
"There's something more frightening?"
Liu Chengfeng caught the lamb, his face ugly in the extreme.
Ning Qiushui's brow knotted into a small crease.
"Haven't you noticed... this family doesn't have a single photograph?"
Liu Chengfeng's knife paused briefly over the meat.
It was true.
The little girl the mistress had led away looked at least eight or nine. After all those years, even if the master and mistress of the house had divorced, there should still be some photos left around—of the woman, of her daughter...
But in fact, on the first and second floors there wasn't a single photograph—not of the woman, not of the little girl, not of the old lady upstairs!
Why... would that be?
"And, unless my eyes deceived me, those women's shoes in the cabinet by the front door..."
Ning Qiushui stopped mid-sentence, and finally shook his head.
"Never mind..."
"Let's cook first."
"Most of the answers... should come tonight."
Seeing that Ning Qiushui didn't want to say more, Liu Chengfeng tactfully didn't press.
But he kept stealing glances at him.
This man... was too strange.
The fat man's flayed skin before, and the whole string of eerie horrors in the world behind the Blood Door since—none of it had drawn much panic out of him.
If anything... his calm was eerie in its own right!
In his thirty-odd years, Liu Chengfeng had never once seen psychological armor like this!
Was he really just a veterinarian, out in the world?
A thick curiosity about this man named Ning Qiushui began to grow in him.
***
Dinner.
They sat around the table, no one speaking.
"Liu Chengfeng, how come you're not touching the food?"
The observant Xue Guize had noticed that Liu Chengfeng, the cook, had served himself only a little plain rice congee and hadn't touched the dishes at all.
Tonight's lamb was fragrant.
Yet Liu Chengfeng hadn't taken a single bite.
He had even set the lamb down in the corner of the table farthest from himself.
"Huh? The food?"
"Oh, right, the food... My—my stomach's a bit off..."
Liu Chengfeng mumbled evasively, his face ugly.
He and Ning Qiushui hadn't told the others about the human flesh in the refrigerator.
Two of their number were dead already, after all.
Everyone was as skittish as birds startled by a bowstring. Leak that news now, and it would only pile terror on terror.
Besides, even if the others knew, it wouldn't help their survival in the slightest.
The task required them to care for the old woman in this villa district for five days; so five full days they would have to stay.
After dinner, they faced a new problem—
What to do with Yan Youping.
With the other two women dead, she was the only girl left in the group.
Surely... she wasn't to sleep in a room alone?
"I—I'm not sleeping alone!"
Sensing the strange mood, Yan Youping looked ready to burst into tears.
Was this a joke?
Sleep alone, in a place this terrifying?
How was that any different from just killing her outright?
Weighed against life and death, proprieties like "men and women should keep their distance" meant nothing at all to Yan Youping!
"Then how about this—tonight you sleep in our room. The two of us will take the sofas; you take the bed."
Bei Dao said.
Xue Guize had no objection either.
After all... their group kept on shrinking.
The more who died, the more danger for those who remained!
Yan Youping nodded and cast the two of them a grateful look.
Ning Qiushui watched all this and shook his head slightly.
He knew: if the ghost hiding in the villa's shadows wanted someone dead, a hundred of them huddled together would make no difference.
Only when their faces had recovered a little color did he speak:
"It's late. Everyone get some rest... And remember to check your doors and windows. Lock them tight."
"Once today is over, three more days and we can leave."
They nodded.
Switching off the hall lights, Ning Qiushui went up to the second floor with them, watched until every one of them had gone into their rooms, and then turned off the corridor light.
The switch was at the head of the stairs.
Normally, corridor lights in a place like this would be two-way or multi-way—turned on at one end, off at the other, for convenience.
Yet for some reason, the second-floor corridor light of this villa had been fitted with a single one-way switch.
The instant the corridor light went out, the whole villa plunged into a darkness so total you couldn't see your hand in front of your face!
Ning Qiushui felt his skin crawl. He was about to head for his room when a faint sound suddenly reached him from not far behind.
It wasn't loud—but in the dead-silent darkness, it rang crisp and clear!
It was... the sound of the iron lock on the third-floor door... clicking open!
Ning Qiushui's body went rigid.
Upstairs...
Something seemed to be coming down!
And it was... right behind him!