vrcanaries Chapter 747 Old things happen again
Chapter 747 Old things happen again
The old lady's expression suddenly became stiff: "Zhang Xiaoyun? She, she no longer lives here."
"I know." Chen Yile took out a photo from his bag. "Is this the photo she took in your hotel?"
The old lady took the photo and looked at it carefully for a while: "Yes, it's this photo."
"Does she come here often?" Chen Yile asked.
"About once a month," the old lady replied. "She stays overnight and leaves the next morning."
"Did she mention anything strange?" Chen Yile asked.
The old lady was silent for a moment, her eyes flickering: "She always said she dreamed of a scary face."
Chen Yile's heart tightened. "Dream of a scary face? What exactly does it look like?"
"She said the face was pale and distorted, with a strange smile at the corners of its mouth." The old lady's voice trembled. "She also said that every time she dreamed of that face, she felt a chill, as if a knife was stabbing into her soul."
Chen Yile's fingers trembled slightly. He pulled a piece of paper from his bag and wrote down his contact information. "If you think of any useful information, please feel free to contact me."
The old lady took the note and carefully put it in her pocket: "I will remember it."
Chen Yile turned and walked towards the stairs, ready to check the room Zhang Xiaoyun had lived in. The stairs creaked, and every step made him feel uneasy.
At the end of the corridor on the second floor is the room where Zhang Xiaoyun lived.
The door was locked and the key was inserted in the crack. Chen Yile gently turned the key, pushed the door open and walked in.
The room was in a mess. The sheets and quilts had been taken away and packed up. There were scraps of paper and plastic bags scattered on the floor, and the air was filled with a musty smell.
The sunlight filtered through the tattered curtains, casting mottled shadows on the floor.
Chen Yile walked to the window and opened the curtains. Outside the window was a narrow alley filled with abandoned furniture and garbage. The sound of dogs barking in the distance made the alley seem particularly desolate.
He walked over to the bed and carefully examined the mattress and sheets.
There were some dark red marks on the mattress, which might be blood. He took out the testing tools he carried with him and found that these marks were indeed blood.
"It seems there has been a fierce struggle here," he said to himself.
Just then, his eyes fell on a yellowed photo on the bedside table.
The photo is blurry, but you can vaguely make out a man's profile - pale, distorted, with a strange smile at the corner of his mouth.
Chen Yile's heartbeat quickened. The man in the photo looked exactly like the man described in Zhang Xiaoyun's diary!
He picked up the photo and examined it carefully, and suddenly found a line of small words on the back of the photo: "In XX, the first dream murder case in Dongcheng City."
Chen Yile quickly put the photo into his pocket and turned to walk towards the door.
Just as he was about to leave, he suddenly heard hurried footsteps coming from downstairs.
"Who's there?" a man's voice came from downstairs.
Chen Yile clenched his fists cautiously and slowly walked to the stairs to look down. A burly man was standing in the hall, his face full of anger.
"Who are you?" the man asked.
"I'm here to investigate Zhang Xiaoyun's case." Chen Yile replied.
"Go away," the man said coldly. "There's nothing to investigate here."
Chen Yile frowned: "Who are you?"
"I'm the new owner of this hotel," the man replied. "Zhang Xiaoyun's matter is in the past. I don't want to talk about it anymore."
Chen Yile noticed that the man's eyes were flickering, as if he was deliberately avoiding something.
"Can I talk to you?" he asked tentatively.
"There's nothing to discuss." The man turned and walked towards the front desk. "You'd better leave now."
Chen Yile stood at the stairs, looking at the man's back. He felt that this man knew something but was unwilling to say it.
After leaving the Oriental Hotel, Chen Yile decided to interview a colleague of the second victim, Li Ming, a food delivery driver who had the same symptoms as Zhang Xiaoyun before his death.
He went to the takeout company where Li Ming worked and found his colleague Xiao Wang.
"Li Ming has been acting really strange lately," Xiao Wang recalled. "He kept saying he dreamed of a scary face, but he couldn't quite describe what it was."
"Did he say anything else?" Chen Yile asked.
"He said that every time he dreamed of that face, he would feel a chill, as if a knife was stabbing into his soul." Xiao Wang repeated Li Ming's words.
Chen Yile's heart tightened. This sentence was exactly the same as the symptoms Zhang Xiaoyun described!
"Did he mention any other place?" Chen Yile asked.
"He said he'd been to the Oriental Hotel," Xiao Wang replied. "He said he had a strange feeling there, like he was being watched."
Chen Yile closed his eyes, and the yellowed photo of the Oriental Hotel appeared in his mind. On the back of the photo was a date from forty years ago, which meant that a similar incident had occurred in Dongcheng City as early as forty years ago.
He took out his notebook and wrote down his findings:
Zhang Xiaoyun and Li Ming have both been to the Oriental Hotel.
The back of the photo of the Oriental Hotel mentions the 1987 'Murderous Nightmare' incident.
Both victims dreamed of the same person - a pale, distorted man with a strange smile on his lips.
After returning to his residence, Chen Yile turned on his computer and typed "XX Dongcheng City Dream Murder Case" into the search engine. Soon, he found some relevant information.
"In XX, a bizarre death occurred in Dongcheng City. The deceased saw a terrifying face in their dreams."
He continued to look through the materials and found that the incident was eventually attributed to natural death, but many witnesses claimed to have seen a mysterious man wandering around the crime scene.
"It seems this isn't just an ordinary incident." Chen Yile closed his notebook. "There must be some unknown secret hidden behind it."
He walked to the window and looked at the Oriental Hotel in the night. The moonlight on the hotel wall seemed to outline a strange face.
"I must uncover this mystery," he whispered, "otherwise more people will die in this murderous nightmare."
Chen Yile lay on the bed, those strange images kept flashing through his mind.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and prepared to sleep. But he couldn't fall asleep.
Suddenly, his cell phone vibrated.
It's a new message.
"The whole city is about to fall into a nightmare."
Chen Yile's heart tightened. He quickly checked the text message details and found that the message had no sender or number, nor any traceable information.
He stood up and walked to the window.
There are stars outside the window and the night is as dark as ink.
A gust of cold wind blew by, as if reminding him of the cruelty of the world. He silently closed the window and returned to bed.