Chapter1 nightmare
"Ma'am, would it be convenient for you to repeat what you just said?"
Silence hung in the air, thick and oppressive.
"......Yes, but please ...... Don't ever mention this to anyone, especially my husband and daughter!"
"I understand. So ...... can we begin downstairs?"
"It all started with a phone call—three nights ago.
The call was from my sister. She was in a strange state, her teeth chattering, her voice strained as if it were being squeezed from her throat.
When I asked if she was unwell, she didn’t respond. Instead, she kept repeating a dream she had recently."
"A dream?"
"Yes, a dream.
She said she had been waking up in the middle of the night, getting out of bed, and walking down the stairs from the attic where she lived, stopping at the basement door.
It felt so real, extraordinarily vivid—nothing like a mere dream."
"But your sister insists on calling it a dream. Why is that?"
"Because... she doesn’t even have a basement in her house!"
"Well... you said so."
"I also had a dream about a door, just yesterday."
...
As the recorder clicked off in his hand, the small room sank into an oppressive silence.
Jiang Cheng sat at his desk, his eyes lowered, a copy of the day’s Rongcheng Evening Post laid out in front of him.
The headline read:
Wanted: Hu Yan, female, 47, height 160 cm, rectangular face, pale complexion. Last seen leaving home late on the night of the 13th, reportedly in a fragile mental state. Missing, dressed in light pink silk pajamas. If seen, please contact...
His gaze skipped over the contact details, lingering instead on the photograph beside the notice. A woman, her face showing the weight of years.
It was the same woman who had come to him just yesterday—before leaving behind a cryptic recording.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t one for reading newspapers. This one had been brought by the police, about an hour earlier.
The authorities had traced Hu Yan's last known whereabouts to his apartment.
Jiang Cheng had recounted, in exacting detail, Hu Yan's deteriorating mental state and the strange story she had told him. He handed over the recording she had left behind, with her permission.
The two officers, a man and a woman, took their statements and the recording, but not without lingering. The female officer, her sharp ponytail swinging as she moved, glanced back at Jiang Cheng several times as they left.
Despite being roughly her age, he seemed unnervingly composed, even as he shared an unbelievable tale.
After they politely said their goodbyes, Jiang Cheng returned to his desk.
The silence in the room pressed down on him.
The crisp clatter of keyboard keys echoed intermittently, breaking the silence in the room. Everything moved with a measured, steady rhythm, the night deepening outside as distant neon signs blinked to life, one by one.
Jiang Cheng glanced at the time in the bottom right corner of his computer screen, then stood up. He moved to the studio door, first closing the outer glass door, then the inner one, before locking it securely.
YOU ARE READING
Nightmares
رعبI woke up from my dream and saw a strange door in my house... Behind each door was a strange world. In the nightmare world, Jiang Cheng exaggerated the news he got from the strong man and told the fat man again, and the latter almost cried...
