1.
“If I tell you something, you must not tell anyone else.”
“Well, even if you say so, no one will believe you.”
As Chang Hao empties his glass of beer, he gives a wry smile as if he has some scruples and is laughing at himself:
“I know where yuan yuan is.”
Zhang Hao’s daughter is missing. On that summer night
a few years ago, Chang Hao frantically knocked on my door and asked me if I had
seen his daughter.
“You let me go in and have a look. The child said he would come to your house to play in the afternoon. Have you seen him?”.
Outside the door, Zhang Hao desperately pulled my hand, like a mad beast.
At that time, there was very little surveillance. The police investigated several surveillance sites on the main street, and notices of missing persons were posted
all over the street. Zhang Hao’s daughter disappeared from the world without any news.
Since then, Zhang Hao has been possessed.
Zhang Hao’s home is crowded with so-called “masters,” but those masters are all swindlers. Zhang Hao’s family has run out of money and has not found any clues about his daughter.
So when I heard that he had news of his daughter, I was extremely excited:
“Tell me where it is, and I’ll go with you!”
“I can’t go.” Chang Hao’s expression became desolate. “Chen Gu, yuanyuan’s mother died early. You are my only friend and yuanyuan’s godfather. I only ask you one thing.”. It’s a weird thing, but I’ll go if there’s one chance in a million. If I don’t come back, I have something for you in the second drawer of my bedroom at home.
We sat at the farthest table from the light in the dining room. It was so dark in the summer that I couldn’t see his face.
“Don’t ***ing dawdle. Where the hell is yuanyuan?” I’m frantic. What time is it to play charades.
Zhang Hao raised his head and looked at me for a long time, but his eyes told me that he was not looking anywhere, just at a loss.
“Photo.” “yuanyuan is in the photo,” said Chang Hao as if he had lost his soul.
“Where are the photos?” I quickly asked, as long as I know where the place in the picture is, there is hope to find the child.
“Chen Gu..” Holding back tears, Zhang Hao trembled and pulled out a report that looked like it had been cut out of a newspaper. I took out my cell phone and saw it clearly by the light.
The paper is yellow and looks old. “A mirage has appeared in the city, and strange buildings are clearly visible,” the
report read. The building was
not so much strange as eerie in appearance:
it was a huge bronze door, hanging on the empty sky, out of place with the surrounding scenery
. What is
even more bizarre is that by comparing the surrounding scenery, the “gate” in the photo is nearly 40 meters
high. My science is architecture. The largest gate in the world is the Huamen Gate in Linfen, Shanxi Province.
Its main gate is only 18 meters, while the bronze gate in the picture is more than twice as high. There is absolutely no such thing on
earth.
On the ground directly in front of the door, the figure of a little girl is facing the camera.
“Look at this little girl, Chen Ku. Does her figure and the clothes she wears look round
?”. Zhang Hao said in a hoarse voice.
It was clear that the photographer’s attention was on the mirage. In order to get a clear picture of the door
, the photographer zoomed in very close, so the proportion of the person in the picture became
smaller and blurred, and only a little girl could be seen faintly.
“Look at the clothes on her!” Chang Hao points to the person in the photo. “Does it look like the one yuan yuan
is wearing?”
And hair! I braided the round braid for her, and I will never admit my mistake. Zhang Hao said excitedly.
“Don’t worry.” I quickly reassured him, “a mirage is just a refraction of light, and light cannot refract something that is not in reality.”. Although this door looks strange, it’s probably the result of camera imaging. If we just scan picture and look for it on the Internet, we’re sure to find the corresponding place.
“Chen Ku, do you think I can’t think of that?” Zhang Hao waved his hand painfully.
Looking at the color photos with a sense of age in the newspaper, I suddenly had a bad feeling in my heart.
Zhang Hao looked at me with a strange expression and said
, “This newspaper is from 1988.”
2.
Zhang yuan was 11 years old when she disappeared in 2007. In 1988, she was not even born.
Zhang Hao’s words exploded in my ears like a huge thunder. His daughter, who had been missing for a long time, appeared in the newspaper more than 20 years ago. If it weren’t for this picture, I would even suspect that he had gone crazy because of the long-term pressure.
“I’m not going to let you believe that.” Seeing my suspicious eyes, Zhang Hao laughed at himself and said, “Chen Gu, sometimes I feel like I’m crazy. I don’t care if this girl is yuanyuan or not, I must go and find her.” How do you find it? Based on this photo that you don’t even know if it’s real or not? I am a little annoyed
, Zhang Hao is my best friend, I also want to find Zhang yuan as soon as possible.
But how to find it with an old newspaper? Where to find it?
“If you must go, I must follow you.” I said firmly.
“I have a little clue of my own. Just remember what I just said to you and help
me for the last time.” Zhang Hao got up and patted me on the shoulder, motioning me not to say any more.
I collapsed on the stool, surrounded by a noisy crowd, but my head was silent
, I looked at Zhang Haoyuan’s back, wanted to say something, but finally did not open
his mouth.
A few days later, Zhang Hao also disappeared.
Third,
at that time, Zhang Hao and I agreed that he would send text messages to me at a specific frequency to ensure his
own safety.
Three days ago, this contact was broken. The first thing
I thought of was to call the police and find Zhang Hao with the help of Skynet. But what should I
say to the police, that my best friend disappeared while chasing a mirage?
Will anyone believe it? After
much hesitation, I called the police, and I could only hope
for the strength of the police when I was at a loss. I was received by a policeman in his 40s. I hid the reason why Zhang Hao left
, but said I couldn’t get in touch with him.
The police asked me some basic information in detail and asked me to go back and wait for the news.
“We will contact you immediately if there is any situation. If you know his hometown,
you can ask his parents first.” The police said so.
Zhang Hao is an only child whose parents have long passed away.
I stood in front of the police station and smoked furiously, and things seemed to have reached an impasse.
Without the help of the police, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack to find Zhang Hao without knowing
where he is going.
I beat my head with my right hand while smoking a cigarette, and it was my childhood
problem to have a headache when I was anxious. After
beating my head three or four times, the headache was relieved, and I began to think about the way out.
Maybe there’s really only one way to find him.
I remembered what Zhang Hao had said before he left. He said he wanted me to go to his house after he disappeared.
Zhang Hao’s home is not far away, but I haven’t been there once since he disappeared. I subconsciously
resist going there, even though there may be something important left by Zhang Hao.
Because I have a feeling that if I go too far in this matter, something uncontrollable
may happen. I
think I am not a person who can give everything for others, although I also hope to find Zhang Hao and his daughter, and if necessary, I will not hesitate to do my best.
But what drives me forward now is more curiosity about that picture. The little girl in
that photo really looks like Zhang Hao’s daughter. I’ve heard that there are people in the world who are not related by blood but look exactly the same, but is there really such a coincidence? A little girl who looks like Zhang Hao’s daughter happened to appear in the mirage? Is
that a possibility? The bigger
doubt is the 1988 newspaper mentioned by Zhang Hao. According to my understanding of Zhang Hao, he did not have the habit of collecting old newspapers, so where did this newspaper come from?
I decided to call the monkey.
Monkey, whose original name is Xu Pei, is my childhood friend with Zhang Hao. When we were young, we
lived in the same building. Xu Pei was nicknamed “Monkey” by Zhang Hao because of her thin stature. Later, they had a big fight for some reason and never spoke again. But my relationship with Monkey was not affected by this. I tried to repair their relationship, but both of them were stubborn. No one will be the first to bow.
Now Zhang Hao is in trouble, the first helper I think of is still a monkey, no matter how to say that it is also a friendship of playing with urine and mud from childhood, even if there is a contradiction later, it will not always let him die.
The phone was soon connected, and I told the monkey the whole thing. After a long silence
, a sigh came from the other end of the phone.
“Where are you?” He said.
The monkey quickly arrived at my residence. He and I had not been together for several
years because of the working distance. We talked on the phone on weekdays. This time, when I saw
him again after many years, I felt that he was getting thinner and thinner.
Too late to be polite, I told the monkey what I thought.
“Are you really not kidding?” The monkey looked at me with a solemn expression.
I shook my head helplessly.
“We haven’t spoken for years. I heard about yuanyuan’s disappearance from you
.” The monkey sighed and said, “Could it be that he is mentally abnormal because of the blow
?”
“I’ve seen the picture in the newspaper, and it does look like it.” I said, “Chang Hao doesn’t look insane either
.”
“I can only go and have a look.” “Look what he left for you,” said the monkey.
At dusk, we came to the neighborhood where Zhang Hao lived.
The building is an old tube-shaped apartment, the light is broken, and you can only borrow your mobile phone in the dark by memory.
The light groped its way. The tube-shaped apartment is filled with an indescribable smell, like the smell of burning straw in my childhood home
. The smell wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either, and I was in a trance for a moment
, as if I had returned to my childhood.
Zhang Hao’s home is on the 4th floor. I took out the key given by Zhang Hao and opened the door.
The monkey exclaimed first, and I was startled by him. I looked up and saw pictures
all over the wall.
“It seems to be all round pictures.” The monkey was silent.
Zhang Hao inherited his father’s hobby of photography, but after his wife passed away, he no longer went out to
take pictures of scenery, and he transferred all his love to his daughter.
I suddenly felt sad.
The electricity was cut off because of arrears, so we had to turn on our mobile phones and go to the bedroom to look for them.
It was easy to find, and when I opened the drawer, I could see
two brass keys and a note.
I was a little disappointed. I thought it would be something strange, but it turned
out to be just two ordinary brass keys, one slightly larger and one smaller, which cost 50 cents
each in the hardware store.
I unfolded the note and managed to see the words on it by the light of my cell phone:
“Sundry Room.”. The handwriting is illegible. It looks familiar to me.
“Chang Hao is talking about the broom closet in his hometown?” The monkey’s reaction is very quick.
I nodded. There were two keys, and the big one should correspond to the
door of the sundry room in my hometown.
Old-fashioned tube-shaped apartment will empty a row of low-rise small houses opposite the building for residents to park
bicycles and other things. My family and Zhang Hao’s family share a sundry room, which is the secret base of our
childhood and the place where we have the most memories. The sundry room in
Zhang Hao’s mouth refers to the sundry room in his hometown. But there is one thing I
do not understand:
why can not tell me the whole story directly in the letter, must use this
obscure way to guide me there?
I think of another possibility, Zhang Hao is on guard against something.
I looked at the monkey, and he was looking at me.
I know what he is thinking, although our hometown is in the west of the city, but
because of the demolition, the house in our hometown was demolished many years ago. It doesn’t make sense
to give us a key to a place that doesn’t exist.
Just as we were looking at each other, the bedroom door was closed. The
door was forcibly closed from the outside. The sudden loud sound of the door closing in the
darkness made my heart almost stop.
“***!” The monkey scolded, and at the same time turned around and kicked the door
almost reflexively. The door was very thick, and he didn’t kick it open with all his strength.
“Who!” I roared. There was a rustling sound outside the door. Someone seemed to be looking for
something.
“Thief!” The monkey was the first to react.
I began to regret that I didn’t close the door when I came in just now, so the thief broke into the empty door.
“Shit, I called the police!” I threatened and kicked the door hard again.
The door was still motionless, and the rummaging in the living room was louder.
“Get out of the way!” The monkey pulled me away.
He took two steps back, hunched up and dashed into the door, only to hear a loud bang from the door
, which finally broke the lock and leaked a small crack. The
crack in the door was too small to see what was going on outside. In a hurry, I turned on the camera of my mobile phone
and put it through the crack in the door. I took a few pictures first, thinking that I would
use evidence when I called the police.
“What time is it?” Without waiting for me to finish shooting, the monkey pulled me away and
kicked the door again. Finally, he kicked the door open. The monkey rushed out first, followed by me
. The
people outside the door seemed to have a premonition that they had already run out of the door at the moment we knocked the door open. It was too dark to see the road ahead. The monkey and I ran down the stairs all the way along the looming sound of running in front of us. My head was a little dizzy, and I felt vaguely that I shouldn’t go after them. At the beginning, there was the sound of people running in front of us. But just as we felt closer and closer to the sound, the sound suddenly disappeared, and the monkey and I stopped. It was dark all around, and we couldn’t find our way at all.
“Damn, you can really run.” Said the monkey, breathing heavily. We didn’t dare to stay
for fear that the other party would have an accomplice to divert the tiger away from the mountain, so we had to go home. When I got back to the
house breathlessly, I remembered to turn on my cell phone.
I used the continuous shooting mode, which was affected by the light conditions and the pixels of the mobile phone in that era. The picture was so blurred that I could only see a figure in the living room looking for something by the light of the mobile phone. Obviously, I didn’t expect that we could break the door open so quickly, or maybe I saw the flash of my camera. The figure obviously hesitated for a moment, and then ran
to the door without looking back to see that it was a man, who should have had a bad intention to see that we had not closed the door.
The living room was made a mess by the dark shadow just now, and the books and furniture ornaments piled up in the living room were scattered on the ground, so we had to pick them up one by one with flashlights.
While cursing the thief who broke in the door, the monkey and I looked around the house to see if anything else had been stolen. My movements stalled
as my eyes swept over the wall.
“Where are the photos?” The monkey also found the problem. At first I thought it was on the ground, but I kept everything on the ground at hand, and there were no pictures in it.
“Shit, the photos are stolen too.” Cursed the monkey, apparently unaware of the strangeness of the matter.
Burglary thieves are not interested in photos, as I soon realized, followed by uncontrolled cold sweats on my back.
The shadow may not be a thief, but someone with the same purpose as me. I told the monkey what I
thought.
“Is anyone else tracking down Chang Hao?” Asked the monkey, frowning.
“I don’t know. Chang Hao seems to have something to hide from me.” I answered truthfully.
Things got complicated, and my head hurt again, so I started beating my head uncontrollably.
“Haven’t you cured your old illness yet?” The monkey looked at me and said.
I shook my head and recalled the scene I saw in the photo: when I kicked the door open, the shadow stopped for a moment, obviously hesitating, and finally decided to run directly to the door.
I tried to put myself into the shadow. If I were him, why didn’t I run away as soon as I saw the other side kick the door open? Unless he’s looking for more than just photos. Otherwise, there are not many photos on the wall, even if
you don’t find the photos you want, you can take all the photos away first, and then
distinguish them one by one. There must be something else
in this living room that he wants to take
away besides the picture.
I began to re-examine the whole living room, and finally my eyes fell on the tea table I gave Zhang Hao when
he moved. There are obvious signs of vandalism on the handle of the drawer under
the tea table. The design of the drawer of the
tea table is very strange, and there is no place to insert the key on the surface, so the person
did not open it for so long. All of a sudden the
memory came up, and I almost trembled and touched the bottom of the tea table with my hand.
There, there is a round keyhole.
It corresponds to a small brass key.
5.
I tried several times, but I couldn’t insert the key into the hole accurately. At first, I thought I
had made a mistake. After repeating several times, I found that my hands were all sweaty.
The monkey patted me. I took a few deep breaths and forced myself to calm down. The moment the key was inserted
, my heart was tightened. With a clear turning
sound, the drawer was opened. The mobile phone belongs to Zhang Hao. I haven’t seen him use this mobile phone since Zhang yuan disappeared.
In order to save electricity, the mobile phone was turned off. I did not hesitate to press the power button directly, and the phone emitted a pale light in the dark. Fortunately, there was still 1 & # x2F; 3 battery. The contents of the
mobile phone have been emptied, all the call records and text messages have been deleted, leaving only a video in the album lying there quietly.
I immediately realized that this might be what Zhang Hao wanted to show me. The
video looks a little blurred under the 500,000-pixel camera, and the picture is shaking all the time. It is obvious that the photographer is in a very excited state when recording. In the
video, near dusk, the photographer is probably in a park-like place, surrounded by trees and flowers, the camera is focused in the sky, has been dangling, the picture occasionally flashes some white noise.
This went on for half a minute, and the photographer was clearly looking for something. Just as I couldn’t help but fast forward, there was another big flash of white noise, and then a man’s voice appeared in the video, the kind of voice that is deliberately suppressed in the face of great excitement:
“Found it.” The
man’s voice was deliberately distorted, but with years of familiarity, I recognized the owner of the voice at once. The video stops there, and after repeating several deep breaths, Zhang Hao speaks again: “I found
it, Chen Gu.”
Then there was the slow movement of the picture, and he seemed to be carefully adjusting the position of the camera.
After a series of slight movements, I finally saw what he wanted to photograph:
a huge bronze door.
Six,
a huge bronze door suddenly appeared in the video. It was very similar to the door
I saw in the photo. Because of the video, I saw its color for the first time
. The light blue door existed quietly in the void, as if
it was there itself.
Zhang Hao may be too excited, the picture began to shake slightly, with the shaking
of the picture, the door became blurred again.
“See?” Chang Hao tries to keep his voice calm. “This is the mirage in
the newspaper.” When
the camera reverses, Chang Hao’s expression is somewhat ferocious:
“Can you see that, Chen Ku?” He stared at me. “I’m going there.” The
video came to an abrupt end here, and I watched the whole video quietly, and my mind was still
confused.
The monkey looked at me with a blank look on his face. Obviously, he couldn’t understand what happened in the video.
I collapsed feebly on the sofa, patting my head hard to try to forget this series of incredible things, but when I closed my eyes, my mind was full of Zhang Hao’s distorted expression at the end of the video.
“Is the door in that picture the same as the one in the video?” The monkey stammered.
I took a deep breath and nodded.
“How is that possible?” “How can there be exactly the same mirage at different times?” My
heart tightened and I turned on my phone again to bring up the details of the video. The shooting date of the
video was three days before Zhang Hao and I met for the last time.
That is to say, this video was recorded before we met, and Zhang Hao did not deliberately return to shoot the video in order to let me understand the truth of the matter.
This is very strange, after the video was shot, why didn’t he come to me at the first time, and had to wait until three days later? What did he go through in these three days?
Obviously there are many opportunities to tell me directly, what is it that makes him choose to be silent when he sees me? The
summer night was a little cool, and we both looked at the dark doorway, and suddenly there was a burst of fear in our hearts. I had several strange dreams off and on that night. In one dream, Zhang Hao stood in front of the door of the old utility room. He pointed to my hand. I looked down and saw the Nokia phone in my hand.
“Do you want this?” I held up my phone and asked him.
He didn’t speak, he just stared at me and smiled. When I woke up
again at noon, the monkey slept on the sofa beside me like a dead pig. I rubbed my stiff neck and sat on the bed in a daze. I haven’t been there for many years after the demolition of
my hometown. The formation principle
of mirage has been explained thoroughly in science. But is there really a mirage that can only be seen from a specific angle with a camera? Ten thousand steps back: even a mirage should correspond to a real building in this world, and the awkward posture and color of the door in the video obviously do not conform to the structure of this world.
But if it’s not a mirage, what is it?
I was filled with great curiosity about the matter. The curiosity of killing the cat obscured my fear and made me ignore the dangerous signals sent by the disappearance of Zhang Hao and his daughter. I forgot that the strangeness of the matter might be beyond my control.
I woke up the monkey and decided to go to my hometown with him.
At that time, I did not think that it was this seemingly ordinary decision that became the first card to knock down the dominoes, and everything that collapsed quickly after that was caused by it.
Or maybe the moment I decided to find out the truth, the gears of fate began to turn quietly.
If I can have a chance to choose again, I will not take risks again. I will use all means to keep Zhang Hao who has decided to go that night.
Unfortunately, there are no ifs. Instead of driving,
we took the subway to the old place in our memory.
Home was changed into the People’s Park after the demolition, I stood at the gate of the park inexplicably remembered Puyi back to the Palace Museum to buy tickets, but the People’s Park is free to the people, which we are better than Puyi.
“Are you sure he meant here?” Asked the monkey.
I nodded. In fact, the moment I saw the video, I understood what Zhang Hao meant. The place where the video was located was the location of the sundry room in my hometown. It was just that things had changed. The things of that year had already been erased by time. We stood in the park where people came and went at a loss.
Fortunately, there is a video, compared with the reference objects in the video, coupled with the blessing of more than 10 years of life experience, finally found the approximate location.
At that time, the position of the utility room turned into a piece of grass, and we stepped on the grass like neuropathy to play with the position of the camera. Perhaps my expression was too heavy, and the aunt wearing a red armband did not choose to kick me away at the first time.
I imitated Zhang Hao’s appearance in the video and adjusted my posture, but I never saw the mirage in the camera. In fact, let alone the mirage, there was no white noise in Zhang Hao’s video. The aunt on the
other side gradually lost patience in waiting.
“Boys, did you two see the no trampling sign?” She finally couldn’t help saying, “What’s the matter with young people these days? Every other day there’s a road and they don’t walk on the grass.” Embarrassed,
I smiled at her sheepishly.
“There have been people standing here with their cell phones before. What are you shooting?” Asked the aunt.
Is there? What does it look like? Xu Pei asked at once.
“a guy about the same size as you two. I don’t know what to shoot here.” The aunt muttered.
The monkey winked at me, and I immediately realized that the person she was talking about might be Zhang Hao.
The gate has not moved for decades. If Zhang Hao can take a picture of it, we have no reason not to take a picture of it. The only explanation was that we had overlooked something, and I looked across the sky again.
“It’s time.” The monkeys reacted quickly. “The video of Chang Hao was shot at dusk.”
I opened the video, and the time on it showed that the shooting was 7:10 in the evening. “What to do?” I asked him that it was noon and there was still some time before dusk.
“Just wait, what else can we do?” The monkey said and leaned back on the recliner next to him.
My mood was a little irritable, and I couldn’t lean there quietly like him, so I began
to talk.
“Why don’t you and Chang Hao talk?” I asked, “I went back to my hometown with
my parents that summer, and when I came back, you two stopped talking.”
“Boring little things.” The monkey smiled and said, “Kids always quarrel over
trivial matters. It’s just that we’re too stubborn, and that’s why we’re drifting
apart.”
I nodded. It’s really not easy to get along with two people like a donkey.
“It’s funny to say, but I’ve almost
forgotten what the quarrel was about in the first place.” The monkey scratched his head and said, “I only remember it’s about his father.”
“Chang Hao’s father?” I asked.
The monkey nodded, “It seems that there was an argument over something belonging to his father, and
then there was a fight.”
“That’s really boring.” I complained.
“That’s how boring kids are.” Chang Hao laughed and suddenly looked
at me as if he had thought of something. “How did yuan yuan disappear?”
9. “It’s just missing.” I don’t know why.
“No, I mean how did she disappear?” The monkey asked, “What happened the day yuanyuan disappeared
?”
“Zhang Hao said that the children went out to play.” I recalled the information that Zhang Hao told me.
“How old was yuanyuan when she got lost?” “Are you eleven or twelve years old?” Asked the monkey.
“Twelve years old.” I added.
“It shouldn’t be easy for a child of this age to be abducted and sold.” The monkey thought, “She told
Chang Hao to go out to play. Did she say where she had gone?”
“He said he would come to my house to play.” I recalled.
“What are you going to play at your house?” The monkey asked in reply.
I was at a loss for words. Yeah, what are you going to play at my house? Why
did yuanyuan come to your house to play? You’re a big man with no kids and no
toys, so what’s the fun? Monkey, look at me.
“You mean Chang Hao is lying?” I wondered.
The monkey nodded. “He knows where the child went that afternoon, but he doesn’t want to tell
anyone.”
“Why?” I was confused. “Doesn’t he want to find his daughter?” I recalled that day when Zhang Hao was crazy outside the door, the pain of tearing his heart and lungs did not seem to be faked.
“What if he knew about the mirage from the beginning?” The monkey frowned.
I pondered his words and could not help but feel a chill behind me.
“You said he started looking for some fortune tellers after the police couldn’t find anyone.” “From what I know of him,” said the monkey, “Chang Hao is not a person who believes in such things.”
“Maybe it was a rush to the doctor?” I said.
“We are all engineering men who are as straight as we can be.” The monkey said, “If one or two searches can be interpreted as a rush to the doctor, but it won’t exhaust the family’s wealth because of these things.”. For you and me, it is more reliable to use the money to put up more notices than to rely on such an illusory thing as fortune-telling.
“But if you were to see these things in the video now, would your materialist values be shaken?” I looked at the monkey.
“That’s why I started to wonder.” The monkey frowned. “He must have been exposed to this supernatural event before.”
“That’s why Chang Hao’s materialist values have been shaken, and he has turned to believe in these strange things.” I asked. “I’m curious.” The monkey looked up at me. “What does he
see in that mirage?”
10.
We lay on the bench and looked at each other in silence. Zhang Hao had his reasons
for not telling me this. To be sure, it was very dangerous. He didn’t want me to take risks, but at
the same time he wanted me to save him.
People are contradictory creatures, Zhang Hao could not bear his childhood into danger, but the desire for life
or let him unconsciously find me, leaving a chance of survival for himself.
It was getting dark.
“It’s about time.” Said the monkey, glancing at his watch.
“Monkey,” I said hesitantly, “I’ll go alone.”
“Why?” The monkey asked in reply.
“Chang Hao went and didn’t come back. I don’t want you to do the same.” I said, “You’re not like me
. You have a wife.”
“Already divorced.”
Looking at my surprised eyes, the monkey smiled and said, “Tell me, how many years have we not
sat together and had a good chat like this?”
“You know, my dad died of high blood pressure a few years ago.” “After work
, I always feel that I don’t have enough time to visit my family or catch
up with my friends. In my spare time, I just want to stay at home and sleep alone. As soon as I look back, my family has passed away, and my old friends are getting farther and farther away.”
In front of the sunset, the monkey turned on his mobile phone and switched to camera mode.
“It’s about time.” He got up and grabbed my arm. “If I can save that boy, I will give him a punch. By the way, ask why he hasn’t come to me for so many years.”
11.
The bronze door floats quietly in the air, emitting pressure like a mountain. The monkey and
I swallowed at the same time.
“How do I get up there?” I asked.
“How do I know?” “It’s so high,” the monkey said nervously. “I can’t fly.”
“It seems to be a little lower than in the video.” I opened Zhang Hao’s cell phone and handed it to the monkey.
“Look at the reference next to it.” I pointed to the tree in the video. “The door in the video is at the top of the tree, and we are now about half an hour behind the time in the video. It has sunk under the tree.”
“Will it decline over time?” The monkey said, “Is this a ***ing elevator?”
“Chang Hao knew that the mirage would sink, so he said he would go there to have a look.” I said.
“Then how did he get in?” “You can’t just walk in, can you?” Asked the monkey.
“Maybe that’s true.” I said, “Let’s lock on to the building with our cell phone camera and see if we can touch it.”
“This is so magical.” The monkey rubbed his temple. “It’s beyond my understanding.”
“a bronze door that only appears in the video and remains in the same position is itself a supernatural existence.” My heart is not so nervous at first, after all, the worst situation is nothing more than a death, but if you can come into contact with such a strange event, it is not in vain.
It was getting dark, and for a moment we couldn’t even see the door in the video, so we could only feel that it was probably there.
Soon after, the street lamp turned on, and by the dim light, we found that the door was only 1 meter high from the ground. The shock of a huge object suddenly appearing in
front of us is indescribable. Although it still looks empty in reality, the pale blue “monster” standing in the camera reminds us of the reality of everything.
“Let’s go.” I pulled up the monkey to move forward, but found that my legs were shaking badly. I looked at the monkey and found that he was also shaking.
“You let me slow down.” The monkey gritted his teeth.
I nodded and calmed myself down.
Because of fear, the camera of the mobile phone in his hand has been shaking, and the buildings in the picture are also shaking and distorting.
“Let’s go.” The monkey breathed a sigh of relief and put his hand on my arm holding the phone to stabilize the picture. It was a funny gesture that made us look like two big men dancing ballroom dancing, but at this time we didn’t care so much. After taking the first step with
difficulty, the road was much easier to walk. We probably walked straight ahead for two or three minutes while watching the video. The bronze door was close at hand but far away, and we could not get close to it.
Just when we wanted to give up, it was suddenly dark all around, and the screen of the mobile phone was also dark.
Then the gate disappeared.
“Holy shit!” Cried the monkey.
“Don’t worry, the phone doesn’t have a night camera. It’s probably because it’s too dark for the camera to capture the picture.” I looked around. It was dark. We should have been too nervous to notice that the street lamp was broken.
“Flashlight! Flashlight!” Urged the monkey in a low voice.
“Look at you.” I turned on the flashlight and the monkey’s old face reappeared in the darkness.
“This unlucky thing is too scary.” The monkey muttered. I looked at the phone, the lens was dark, the bronze door had disappeared, the light
was too bad, the camera could not capture the image at all.
“Forget it, go home.” I patted the monkey.
The monkey nodded, and after a scare just now, we were both a little weak.
About a few dozen meters back, I suddenly stopped and looked at the monkey.
He looked at me at the same time.
“What are you trying to say?” Said the monkey. I couldn’t see his face in the dark.
“You go first.” My heart sank for a moment.
“Chen Gu..” The monkey paused and said what I had a premonition but didn’t want to hear
at all, “This is ***ing wrong!”
12.
From time to time, there are noisy voices around.
But we walked so far, but we didn’t see anyone.
“Can you hear me?” The monkey let out a deep breath.
I nodded.
“Then who the *** is talking?” Even though he had expected it, the monkey’s expression suddenly
twisted. When people are flustered, their judgment will decline. Although my heart is very confused, I still force
myself to calm down. There was a constant noise coming from
all around, but when I listened carefully, I heard something strange.
I can’t understand what those voices are saying.
Like the blurred background voice
used in the game to get the player into the plot, the rhythm frequency is very similar to the voice, but if you listen carefully, you will find that you can’t understand what the voice
is saying.
I looked at the monkey, and he was looking at me, and he obviously recognized the strange
sound.
“Can you understand what they are saying?” He pointe to that surrounding air.
I shook my head.
“You didn’t really run into evil spirits, did you?” Said the monkey.
“Don’t scare yourself.” I said, “I don’t think it’s a living thing
.”
“Are ghosts living creatures?” The monkey asked in reply.
“Even if there are ghosts, they won’t eat you.” I pretended to be relaxed and said, “You have thin arms and thin legs, and you won’t gain weight even if you eat
them.”
“Go to hell.” The monkey’s mood eased a lot. “Then what the hell do you think this is
?” “Does it sound like electricity?” I said.
“It’s kind of like..” The monkey pondered, “Do you have a compass?”
I said no, and the monkey said that as long as it was iron, anything small would do. Then
I remembered that I had a watch, so I quickly raised my hand to show him. Seeing
that it didn’t matter, the monkey gasped with a hissing sound on the spot.
I looked at the dial strangely, only to find that the iron pointer was spinning like a propeller
at some point, and it seemed that it would not stop for a while.
“There is a problem with the magnetic field here.” It took the monkey a long time to stammer a word.
I looked at the needle spinning like a propeller, and there were only two possibilities
for making the needle spin like this: one was that we were near the north and south poles of the earth right now, and the other was that the position of the magnetic field here
was constantly changing.
Given that we haven’t frozen to death in short sleeves, I think the second possibility is better.
I told the monkey what I thought.
“Is this magnetic field harmful to the body?” Asked the monkey.
I shook my head and said I didn’t know, but it wasn’t Disneyland
anyway.
Just as I was about to leave with the monkey, the monkey suddenly grabbed my clothes. “Chen Ku,” he stood opposite me, looking a little nervous. “What is that?”
He pointed behind me.
Thirteen,
I was a little nervous about what he said, and I didn’t dare to look back for a moment.
“Don’t move.” The monkey took a deep breath and put his hand on my shoulder.
“What things?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” The monkey hesitated and said, “There is a black fog under the street lamp on the opposite side. It
‘s very, very black.” Fog.
“Black Fog?” I’m a little surprised.
“I don’t know how to say..” The monkey twisted his neck slowly. “It always feels so wonderful
.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I realized something was wrong with him.
“Chen Ku, I’m going home.” The monkey said stupidly.
He suddenly let go of his hand and rushed behind me.
“Monkey!” I turned around in a hurry and finally saw the “thing” behind me.
The monkey didn’t lie to me. It was indeed a black fog, as if it had swallowed up the darkness, floating quietly in midair.
Although I only took one look at the black fog, I still felt dizzy. I hugged the monkey’s waist to prevent him from moving forward. The monkey walked forward as if he was possessed.
“Monkey,” I shouted, “wake the *** up!”
The monkey seemed to be unable to hear, even though he had been held by me and his feet were still rubbing on the ground.
He kept his eyes on the black fog, as if something was attracting him there.
14.
Holding the monkey in my arms, I threw myself backward and dragged him with all my strength. The monkey was much thinner than me and could not move forward for a while.
I dare not look directly at the black fog, look at the monkey’s appearance, I am afraid it is a hallucination, with a peripheral glance to confirm that the black fog did not continue to move this way, I use my body bit by bit to tie the monkey’s hands and feet.
The monkey seemed to be completely mesmerized by the fog. No matter how I called him, he just kept saying “go home.”.
I had no choice but to break his face to me and slap him with all my strength. My hands were very strong, and the applause echoed for a long time in the empty night.
The monkey was finally slapped by me and woke up. He looked at me in a daze and couldn’t help thinking.
Continue to look back.
“Don’t look back.” I forced his head away from me.
“Was I just fascinated by that thing?” The monkey rubbed his face and said in a daze.
I nodded, this guy’s brain is very quick.
“This damn thing can make people hallucinate.” The monkey said, “Just now my eyes were full
of the appearance of home.”
“Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be able to move, otherwise it would have come so long.” I comforted him
.
“Not necessarily.” The monkey looked down and thought, “When did it appear there
?”
“We didn’t see it when we came from there just now. It appeared
suddenly.” Said the monkey.
“You mean this thing can teleport?” “What
on earth is this?” I asked.
“How do I know?” The monkey said, “But it’s certainly not good.”
I stole another glance at the black fog, which was still in place, as if it had no interest
in us. “Now what?” The monkey asked, “Do you want to ignore this thing and move on?”
I nodded. The best way to avoid danger is not to engage with it.
I face to face with the monkey slowly away from the black fog, the monkey is responsible for looking at the road ahead, I am responsible for
observing the black fog behind.
Even though the black fog was as calm as a pool of stagnant water, I still tightened my nerves. Because I dare not look directly at
the black fog, I can only observe its movement out of the corner of my eye from time to time, even if it is 1 centimeter
forward, I will immediately pull the monkey to run.
This state did not last long, and when I glanced at it out of the corner of my eye for the fourth time, the black
fog disappeared.
At the same time, the monkey stopped.
“Chen Gu,” whispered the monkey, “that thing is right in front of me now.”
Fifteenth,
my brain buzzed, and the oppression brought by the black fog came from the deepest part of my soul, just like
the first time I saw a huge Siberian tiger with muscles in the zoo, which was a sense of crisis from
the depths of my genes. There is no safety
glass between us and the black fog.
“What to do?” The monkey asked me, his voice visibly trembling.
“Where is it now?” I asked.
“About 2 meters in front of me.” Said the monkey. “Don’t look at it.” I said.
“I ***ing know!” The monkey was in a hurry. “What are you going to do now, fight
with him or run away?”
I looked up at the position of the street lamp. The black fog on my side had disappeared. Sure enough, this
thing could teleport.
Running is running, but my heart is crossed, and I just fight with it. When
people make up their minds, they become inexplicably brave. I turned around directly.
The black fog was about two steps away from us. I don’t know if it was because of psychological reasons, but I
felt that the temperature around me seemed to drop by several degrees Celsius.
“I’ll count to three, two, one. Let’s rush over and see what it is.” I
said to the monkey.
“Can you do it?” Said the monkey.
“If you can’t outrun it anyway, you won’t be scared to death by a lump of fog.” I said
.
The monkey nodded and breathed a sigh of relief: “Spare it.”
Just as I was about to count down, the black fog suddenly lit up.
It’s hard to describe the scene at that time. The black fog gave off a dazzling light. Even though the monkey and
I had deliberately not looked directly at it, we were still dazzled by the light. I didn’t notice it at first, but when I heard the monkey say so, I couldn’t help concentrating. Sure enough, there was a voice in the black fog.
There was a human voice accompanied by the sound of electric current, but the voice was so distorted that it was impossible to hear what was being said.
Then, the light of the black fog dimmed, and the monkey and I looked at the black fog subconsciously at the same time. It didn’t matter.
A pale hand came out of the black fog! The two of
us had never seen this battle before, and we both panicked for a moment, and the courage we had just managed to muster was beaten back in an instant. The
monkey screamed and ran to the side of the black fog, and I hurried to follow him. From time to time, there was a terrible roar in the black fog behind me, which hit my nerves like a pendulum.
I did not care about anything, only know to follow the monkey running all the way in the dark, do not know how far to run, I do not know when the sky began to rain heavily, no one on the road. Then
we gradually came to our senses. I looked at the monkey, and he looked at me blankly.
“What was that?” The monkey muttered to himself. My heart was beating so hard that I turned around and shone my flashlight on it. Fortunately, the black fog didn’t catch up
.
I don’t know if it was because the rain was too loud, but the voice of the crowd in my ears disappeared.
The monkey wiped the rain from his forehead. “Are we on the right track?”
I began to regret getting involved in this matter, and now I was wet all over, and I
missed the comfort of bathing at home.
“Chen Ku, what is that?” Said the monkey out of the blue.
Sixteen,
I put the flashlight back in the direction I came as the monkey said.
The rain was very heavy, and through the dense rain, a
series of low tile-roofed houses appeared not far from the flashlight, and the tile-roofed houses were interspersed with old residential buildings.
“Did we have these houses when we came here?” The monkey whispered, “Do I have
amnesia?”
I shook my head. The park was built in the center of the city. Such an old house should have been demolished
long ago.
Just as I was thinking hard as if I had seen such a building somewhere, the
monkey exclaimed again.
I looked back and saw that the park just now had disappeared and turned into a residential
building of the same structure. “Where the hell is this?” The monkey panicked.
From the moment I saw the huge door, I was a
little numb to such a strange thing, so I didn’t panic very much.
The rain was so heavy that there was no place to shelter from the rain, and I was even more afraid that we would
get sick.
“Would you like to go and have a look?” “I’m afraid the rain won’t stop for a
while,” I said, pointing to the building in front of me.
We trotted all the way to the residential building, probably because of the heavy rain, there was no one on the road
, looking at the more and more clear buildings in front of me, I had a more
bad idea in my heart.
Obviously, this is no longer our original world, but when I really stood in front
of the tube-shaped apartment, I confirmed the feeling in my heart. I have seen
such a building before, just in my memory of my hometown decades ago.
This is the home we lived in when we were young.
The monkey reacted and opened his mouth wide.
I’m not dreaming, am I? The monkey slapped his face hard.
“Even a dream is too real.” I ran my hands over the scratches on the wall that
I had carved when I was a child. The texture of the building was so real that I stared at the new scratches,
the initials of the three of our names that I had carved with my own hands.
The first floor is the home of the monkey, because I was scolded by the old lady for carving words on the wall of his house.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I really couldn’t believe it. There is a light on the
fourth floor, which is Zhang Hao’s house. The monkey and
I looked at each other tacitly.
“How dare you! Do you think you can get in?” Said the monkey.
My heart says that courage does not mean that we are not afraid of death. There may be something
waiting for us in this tube-shaped apartment.
When hesitating, there was a flashlight in the rain, and we were
frightened birds, which made us panic even more.
“What to do?” I asked the monkey.
“Quick, the broom closet!” Monkeys react very quickly.
I quickly took out the key I got at Zhang Hao’s house and dragged the monkey to hide in.
The light swayed closer and closer. Fortunately, the rain was so heavy that the other party should not have seen us
.
We hid in the dark sundry room and dared not breathe. The corridor lights on the first floor came on
. Through the crack of the door, I saw a thin man running into the building with an umbrella and humming a song.
“Dad.” The monkey reeled back. “Oh my God, it’s my dad!”
17.
Through the window on the first floor, we saw the man enter the house and turn on the light. The man’s figure was reflected in the dim light
. Before long, the figure of a little boy was reflected in the window
. The man touched the little boy’s head. They sat down together and began to eat.
The monkey slumped on the ground. “That’s impossible.”
“My father is dead, and I put all his ashes in there with my own hands.” The monkey said and
laughed to himself. “That’s impossible.”
I was afraid that he would have a mental problem, so I quickly helped him up and said, “Calm down. This is obviously
not our world anymore.”
The monkey obviously could not accept all this in front of us, and we stood in the dark sundry room quietly
peeping at the opposite world. The lights in the
room dimmed.
“They are asleep.” The monkey turned around and said.
“Now what?” My brain was in a whirl and I had no idea for a moment.
“Do you want to see it?” The monkey points to the fourth floor. “Maybe there’s a clue
in Chang Hao’s house.”
I denied his proposal, and now it is not a rational way to rush into Zhang Hao’s house.
So what do we do? This is the ’80s, and our clothes don’t fit in with theirs. If we stay out at dawn, we’ll be discovered. “If it were a man,” said the monkey.
I looked at him in silence and suddenly thought, “Do you have any way of knowing what time it is?”
“Summer vacation.” “Only during the summer holidays would my father wake me up for dinner. At other times he would let me finish eating and go to bed early for fear of affecting my study,” the monkey said with certainty.
“Go to my house.” I said, turning to grope on the door beam of the utility room.
“There’s no one in your house?” “What are you looking for?” Asked the monkey.
“The key.” I answered him as I touched it, and finally I felt something metallic.
“The writing on the wall is new.” I said, “My parents and I went back to our hometown in the countryside that summer vacation.”
Eighteen,
we didn’t dare to turn on the corridor lights and went to the third floor in the dark. To be on the safe side, I knocked on the door and made sure no one was there before I took out the key and opened the door.
“What smell has been there since just now?” The monkey frowned as soon as he entered the room.
“The smell of burning straw.” I said, “You haven’t forgotten the straw you used to cook when you were a kid, have you?” The arrangement in the
house was still familiar before. I was in a trance for a moment. I took some dry steamed bread slices from the kitchen. The monkey hesitated at first. Finally, maybe he was really hungry. We had dinner with pickles and water. The feeling of fullness brought by
food reminds us of the reality of everything.
“What are we going to do?” “How are we going to get back?” Asked the monkey as he nibbled at the steamed bun.
I said I didn’t know, the park had disappeared, and I didn’t know what to do even if I had to go back the same way.
“Maybe we can find Chang Hao first. He might know how to get back.” The monkey swallowed his last mouthful of steamed bun. “What do you think?”
“Why don’t you speak?” Seeing me bow my head and keep silent, the monkey asked.
“There was a watch in the hand sticking out of the black fog just now.” I looked up at the monkey. “It seems to be the same as Chang Hao’s.”
“***!” The monkey closed his eyes and fell on the sofa.
“So what should we do?” “We don’t belong to this world,” said the monkey.
“Without that damn picture.” I muttered to myself.
“Photo..” The monkey murmured in his mouth, and suddenly he sat up straight as a carp. “Did Zhang Hao cut that picture out of the newspaper?”
I nodded subconsciously.
“I seem to remember the reason why we quarreled.” Said the monkey.
One summer vacation, when you went back to your hometown, Chang Hao and I were playing downstairs. When Chang Hao went home to go to the toilet, a strange man came over and borrowed Chang Bo’s camera to take pictures of the sky for a while. A few days later, Chang Bo took a picture of a mirage in front of his house in the newspaper. But I always felt that the picture was not taken by Chang Bo. Chang Hao refused to accept it, and the more we quarreled, the more fierce we became. So we had a fight.
“Was the photo taken by Chang Hao’s father?” I was surprised.
“I think it was taken by that strange man.” “After all,” said the monkey, “who would waste a film on the sky in front of his house?”
“Do you remember that man?” I asked.
“I can’t remember.” The monkey rubbed his temple.
“I wonder what that black fog is.” The monkey faced me. “If it devoured Zhang Hao as you said, then why didn’t it attack us?”
“I have an idea.” The monkey said slowly, “What if we make black fog a rule?”
“Rules?” I have some doubts.
“The rules of the world.” The monkey said, “We call the original world the outer world, and this past time and space the inner world. It is impossible for us who exist in the outer world to coexist with us in the inner world.”
“But we do exist.” I said.
“This is where the paradox comes in. There cannot be two identical atoms in the same space-time, even if they come from the past and the future.” “The universe must have a way to correct this,” said the monkey.
“You mean?” A terrible thought gradually formed in my mind.
The monkey nodded, “I’m afraid the black fog is the rule of the world. If we break the rule, it will act.”
“What are the rules?” I asked.
“It’s very simple. Don’t meet yourself.” The monkey said, “Do you remember Old Liu Tou from the back neighborhood?”
“The professor who studies theoretical physics?” I don’t understand the meaning of the monkey’s words: “Why do you mention him?”
“You’ve never listened to anyone before.” The monkey gave me a white look and said, “Old Liu Tou told us a similar story before. In a word, positive electrons and negative electrons will annihilate into electromagnetic waves at the moment of meeting. I don’t want to be like that.”
“Actually, there’s no need to be in such a hurry.” The monkey continued, “The door has always been there. We just have to get to it the way we came and maybe we can get back.” “But our cell phones are dead.” I said helplessly.
“There’s always a way.” The monkey looked at the wall, not knowing what he was thinking.
I was lying on my back on the sofa rubbing my temples, and the green bat fan
on the ceiling was squeaking.
Nineteen,
this sleep is very long, in a daze downstairs came the peddler’s cry, I opened my eyes,
found that the monkey disappeared. I
was so excited that I almost bounced off the sofa. I looked around and saw the monkey standing in the kitchen
smoking. His eyes were staring downstairs through the window.
“Where did the smoke come from?” I asked, remembering that the monkey had quit smoking for a long time.
“Your father’s.” The monkey pointed to the bottom of the tea table.
I can not help but surprised, my mother does not allow my father to smoke, my father has been secretly hiding cigarettes under the tea table
, monkeys even remember this.
“Got any clothes?” “Let’s change our clothes and go downstairs,” said the monkey.
We changed into my dad’s plaid shirt. I stood in the doorway and hesitated, wondering if I
should open the door. The monkey made a quick decision to open the door and went out.
The time is nearly dusk, downstairs sounded Luo Dayou’s “Zhi Hu Zhe Ye”, our three family
conditions are very good, Zhang Hao’s father has always been very fashionable, from his photography
can be seen. The two of
us ran downstairs like thieves for fear of being seen. The rain had stopped. It was dawn. The monkey and I rubbed our eyes. Everything seemed to be dreaming. There are people coming and going on the
street, most of them dressed simply, but there are also a few people wearing bell-bottoms, flowery shirts and big sunglasses, who are not serious young people at first sight.
“Where to?” The monkey asked me.
“I can’t go anywhere.” I replied. Taking out the RMB
we had on us would cause unnecessary trouble, and two penniless people could do nothing but walk around the street like a blind stream.
“We must quickly find a way to get back.” I said to the monkey, “Otherwise, if there is no money, it will be a problem to eat.”
“Monkey?” When I saw that he didn’t respond, I looked up and found that he was looking at the back. The man
behind us smiled and nodded to us, and then hurried away.
“My dad’s on the night shift.” The monkey muttered to himself.
“We can use Chang Hao’s father’s camera.” I said. When I was upstairs
just now, I saw Zhang Hao’s father bowing his head and playing with his camera not far from downstairs, and the young monkey was standing beside him.
I asked the monkey to hide first, because no one was sure what would happen when two identical individuals in different time and space met. I calmed down and put on a smile and walked to Zhang Hao’s father.
“You have a nice camera!” I walked over to him. The monkey
beside me, who was still a child, looked up at me, and I was afraid to look at him.
“It’s not a serious camera. It’s just a Fuji Polaroid.” Zhang Hao’s father smiled sheepishly
and handed me the camera generously.
“I love photography, too. Can I take a picture with it?” “No,” I said. “I
‘ll give you my watch.”
With that, I untied my watch and handed it to him.
“You play, how can a roll of film be worth a watch?” Zhang Hao’s father returned the watch
to me.
I took the Polaroid and stood at the door of the utility room and pressed the shutter at the sky.
“Is your name Hsu Pei?” I said to Xu Pei, who was still a child.
The child nodded.
“Your father is waiting for you over there on the street corner.” I said to him.
The child was very polite, thanked me and ran to the street. The monkey on
one side hurried over. I took the photo very quickly. I handed it to Zhang Hao’s father. In his surprised
expression, the monkey and I walked forward and watched the camera adjust its direction.
“Chen Ku, I always feel there’s something strange going on.” Whispered the monkey.
“Don’t think about it. Now we just need to go back quickly.” I didn’t look at him. In
fact, I had a vague guess in my mind.
“Was it you that I saw?” The monkey said blankly.
“Maybe.” I said casually, looking at the bronze gate in the sky, and my brain
was in a mess.
When the “door” in the sky was about to fall to the ground, we were almost there, and the monkey and
I looked at each other tacitly.
“Uncle,” a voice interrupted me just as we were about to cross the door.
I turned to look, and the young monkey grabbed the corner of my clothes.
“Why didn’t I find my father?” He said.
My heart suddenly tightened and I hurried to see the monkey, who was also looking at
my young self with a complicated expression.
Perhaps sensing the monkey’s gaze, the child looked up at him.
“No.” I was so anxious that I cried out.
It seemed that just for a moment, the familiar black fog appeared behind the monkey, and then the black fog expanded rapidly at a terrible speed, with no room for reaction, and the monkey was swallowed up by the black fog.
“Monkey!” I shouted.
“Uncle, what’s wrong with you?” The child looked at me as if he did not see what was happening in front of him.
And to see his reaction, it’s better to say that he forgot to see the monkey. In this way, the
monkey was “corrected” by the world and disappeared in the memory of the people of this world.
The black mist seemed unsatisfied after swallowing the monkey and slowly leaned toward me. The nerves of
my whole body exploded, and I could not care about anything, so I could only pick up the clapper and step over the door floating in the air. Noisy voices were heard around me in the
dim light. I opened my eyes carefully, and my clothes seemed to have been soaked in water.
The old house turned back into a park.
I looked at the clapper in my hand and was so distracted that I didn’t care about the crowd around me. I just kept walking until I got out of the park and took a taxi.
The driver asked me where I was going, and I subconsciously told him the address of Zhang Hao’s house.
The newspaper must still be in a corner of Zhang Hao’s home, as long as a pair of dates, you can know whether all this is what I think in my heart. I still have the smell of the old house on my
body, and the driver looks at me differently, but I don’t care at the moment.
It was getting late. I opened the door of Zhang Hao’s house. It was almost the same as when we left. When I was ready to start looking for the newspaper, I looked up and saw the pictures of Zhang Hao’s daughter on the wall. In those pictures, I saw two special pictures. One was Zhang Hao’s daughter standing in front of the sundry room in her hometown. There are blurred doors floating in the sky behind her, and a photo of Zhang Hao and his father. Surprisingly, his father seems to be much younger in the photo.
It seems that Zhang Hao used the door more than once to shuttle between the past and the present, and even took his daughter with him.
At the same time, it can be proved that Zhang Hao cheated me. I gradually had a terrible thought in my
heart: if Zhang Hao had shuttled back and forth through that door many times, the video in his mobile phone could only be specially shot for me to “act.”.
In other words, Zhang Hao has been guiding me step by step in order to make it possible for me to go to the other world to save him, so as not to be frightened by all this weirdness. He does not necessarily want to harm me, but he must be unconsciously leaving a way out for himself. I deeply felt that I already understood human nature, but for a time I could not separate the death of the monkey from Zhang Hao’s selfishness. I kept asking myself, what would I do if I met all this?
But I am not sure, is decades of friendship, Zhang Hao even this trust is not willing to give me and the monkey? Zhang Hao is not the kind of suspicious person, he should know that if he tells the truth, we can not ignore him, and if he tells us the truth is obviously better than we know nothing to save him.
However, before I could think about it, there was a sudden sound of the key turning the door lock at the door. I panicked and could only hide in the bathroom first. The man’s face could not be seen clearly in the
darkness. As they talked, one of them seemed to be very sad and beat his head again and again. They stayed in the living room for a while and then went into the bedroom, as if they were looking for something.
Perhaps because the light in the bedroom was too bad, one of them turned on his flashlight, and when I saw his face, my body froze in place like an electric shock.
I saw myself.
Those few seconds seemed like a century, and I quickly realized that the truth of the whole thing was like this:
Zhang Hao did not choose to tell others after he accidentally found the door floating in the air, but used it to go back and forth between the past and the present, maybe he just wanted to see his relatives. Occasionally, he would take his daughter there with him. But eventually there was an accident, maybe Zhang Hao, maybe his daughter, or maybe something else, triggered the black fog mechanism, Zhang Hao’s daughter was swallowed up, and Zhang Hao, like me now, was randomly thrown to a certain point in time when he went to the other world for the last time. The
real Zhang Hao may have gone to the other world with his daughter along the time line, and the alarm video has been another Zhang Hao, which explains why he has been unwilling to tell the truth, but to use this deceptive means to guide us to save him, because it is not the Zhang Hao I am familiar with that appeared in front of me.
The Zhang Hao who knocked on my door crying, the Zhang Hao who handed me old photos in the restaurant, may be just like me now, just a person from another parallel world.
I took a deep breath and looked into the door, where I was still talking to the monkey.
If I had appeared in front of them now, I might have prevented the next tragedy, and the monkey might not have died.
But just as I was about to push the door out, my brain suddenly repeated the experience of the past few days like a movie, and the screams of the monkeys before they were devoured played back in my mind over and over again.
I put down the hand on the door, every universe has its own rules, the world already has a me, if I go out now, I am afraid that the world and the present me will be like a positron and a negative electron meeting, will both annihilate in the world.
Maybe I can walk away, but where else can I go? This is the real world.
That second is as long as a century. Then, almost without hesitation, I walked quickly to the bedroom door and
slammed it shut.
□ Administer sleeping pills
