Chapter 14
Edward Quan ·
I rushed to the door, opened it, and tried to leave.
But the moment I entered the living room, I heard footsteps outside in the alley.
No!
He was back!
It was too late to run outside.
I couldn't hide in the doll room.
There was nowhere in the living room.
The bathroom wouldn't do either.
That left only—
I ran to the door on the right, opened it, slipped inside, and closed it softly.
Without time to look around, I pulled open the wardrobe and climbed in.
I'd barely closed its doors when I heard the front door shut.
He was home.
My heart pounded as if it would leap out of my chest.
I trembled all over.
Tension made my breathing quicken.
Yiyi, calm down.
You have to stay calm.
Don't let him find you.
Find a chance to escape.
You still have to save Grandma and Mom!
I kept encouraging myself, forcing myself to settle down as I listened for movement outside.
Click.
The bedroom door opened.
The light came on.
Footsteps entered, went a few paces, and stopped.
A few seconds later, they left again.
From inside the wardrobe, I faintly heard another door open and close.
Then someone came back into the room.
“That crazy mother-in-law of yours couldn't keep her nose out of other people's business. Now I've got her too.”
“In that feeble old body, she probably won't last more than a few days.”
The man's voice.
The same voice I'd heard last time.
I leaned forward slightly and looked through the narrow gap between the wardrobe doors.
He sat on the bed with his back to me.
In front of him stood a cabinet.
On it was a doll.
The doll with the nail in its forehead.
“Li Molin!”
“Li Molin!”
“You hateful bastard!”
“Look how many people have suffered because of you!”
“Your wife and your mother-in-law are living without daylight, enduring every kind of torment. All because of you.”
“Your daughter's next.”
Li Molin.
That was Dad's name.
What was this man's connection to him?
“You deserve to die!”
“You deserve it!”
“Even if you died a hundred times, ten thousand times, it wouldn't erase my hatred!”
“You killed my wife!”
“You killed my daughter!”
“I'll make you and your whole family pay a hundred times over. A thousand!”
His voice grew more agitated.
He lifted the doll, pulled out the nail, and drove it back in.
Out.
In again.
Through gritted teeth, he repeated, “Die!”
“Die!”
“Die!”
“Soon...”
“Very soon, I'll send your daughter down to join you.”
“No...”
“A man like you doesn't deserve to see his daughter.”
“You deserve to stay locked in this darkness forever.”
“Never see the sun.”
“Never be reborn!”
“You brought all this on yourself.”
“People have to pay for what they do wrong.”
“They taught us that at school.”
“Wrongdoers must be punished.”
“So...”
“You have no one but yourself to blame for the consequences.”
“Isn't that right...”
“Yiyi?”
As the name left his mouth, the man facing away from me gave a strange laugh.
Slowly, he turned his head.
And looked straight at me.
If everything that had happened lately had shown me the kind of fear that made every pore prickle, this was different.
The man, separated from me by a wardrobe door, brought an oppressive weight that made breathing impossible.
Yes.
Oppression.
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
Even fear disappeared.
I could only watch him approach.
Until the wardrobe door opened.
He stood towering over me.
And I didn't react at all.
“Hello there, Li Yiyi.”
He crouched and looked with interest at me, huddled in the wardrobe.
His skin was a little rough.
A square face.
Single-lidded eyes.
A high nose with a slight bump in the bridge.
Full lips.
An utterly ordinary face.
Like the fathers who came to school with food for their children on Sunday afternoons.
The kind of face you forgot after seeing it once.
Then when you met again, you'd think it familiar without remembering where from.
“Yiyi's grown into such a pretty girl.”
“Just like my daughter.”
He reached out to tuck the hair beside my face behind my ear.
His fingertips brushed my cheek.
I jolted as if shocked, slapped his hand away, and shrank deeper into the wardrobe.
“Who... who are you?”
Getting the words out was difficult.
My lips wouldn't stop trembling.
“You probably don't know me.”
“But I've known you since you were six.”
“When you were little, I followed you to school every day.”
“To your extra classes.”
“To the amusement park.”
“Let's put it this way...”
“I watched you grow up right under my nose.”
“Ha ha ha ha...”
He suddenly burst into laughter.
It grew stranger and stranger.
Then he wiped a tear from the corner of his eye and blinked at me.
“Just like...”
“My own daughter.”
He's insane.
What am I going to do?
Everything seemed connected to Dad's death ten years ago.
From what had happened lately, the ghost called Meizhen had possessed Mom and stayed beside me, pretending to be her.
Even after Mr. Zhang and Grandma had tried to drive her out, she'd remained with me in Mom's place.
If she'd really wanted to kill me, she'd had countless opportunities.
But she hadn't.
Then, for now at least, I was safe.
They seemed to be waiting for the right time to do something.
At that thought, I let out a small breath, tried to steady myself, and met his eyes.
“Sir...”
“Have you been watching me all these years...”
“Because I look like your daughter?”
He clearly hadn't expected such a calm question.
For a moment, he was taken aback.
Then he smiled.
“Yes...”
“And no.”
“You're both kind and sweet.”
“But you're braver than she was.”
“The way you've handled yourself...”
“I'm very pleased.”
He stood, went to the table, took the doll with the nail in its forehead, and left the room.
I climbed out of the wardrobe.
Only then did I see the whole bedroom.
It was perfectly ordinary.
A bed.
A table.
A wardrobe.
A bedside cabinet.
A framed photograph stood on the cabinet.
A family of three.
The father and mother sat in chairs.
A girl stood behind them with her arms around their shoulders, smiling brightly.
The father was the man who'd just left.
The woman beside him was extraordinarily beautiful.
She looked very familiar.
Yet I couldn't remember ever meeting a woman so beautiful.
Why did she seem so familiar?
The girl behind them wore two braids.
Her beautiful eyes were just like her mother's.
It had been a happy family.
But the walls were covered with pictures of someone else, utterly destroying the warmth of that family portrait.
Faces cut from newspapers covered every wall.
All the articles had been cut away.
Only the face from the report remained, with a few lines beside it.
“Driver Li XX, Wu XX, and her daughter Yao XX died at the scene.”
Everything else was gone.
The face was Dad's.
The same photograph, all over the walls.
Huge red Xs had been scrawled across every one of his faces.
It seemed the truth was right in front of me.
I understood the broad outline now.
I left the bedroom and looked around the living room.
The front door was shut.
The doll-room door stood ajar, with the light on inside.
I moved carefully, setting my heel down first, then slowly lowering the rest of each foot, trying not to make a sound as I edged toward the exit.
Passing the doll room, I glanced inside.
The man stood before the row of dolls, looking down at the one in his hand.
He didn't seem to notice me.
I breathed a little easier and kept moving.
At the front door, I slowly pressed the handle and eased it open.
“Yiyi.”
“Mommy told you to go home.”
“Why did you come here?”
Beyond the open door, I didn't see the alley.
I saw “Mom.”
She stood outside with that familiar smile.
I hadn't expected her to be here.
Startled, I backed away several steps.
Then my back hit something.
I turned.
The man.
He was standing right behind me, arms folded.
Smiling too.
“A daughter should be with her mother all the time, of course.”
“Mom” came inside as she spoke and closed the door.
“I... I think I understand why you're doing this.”
“Ten years ago...”
“My father ran over your wife and daughter.”
“So you've hated him ever since.”
“But he died in the crash too.”
“My mother and grandmother are innocent.”
“Why can't you leave innocent people alone?”
I swallowed.
My voice shook.
“A crash?”
“Ha ha ha ha ha...”
“A crash?”
The man began that strange laughter again.
Meanwhile, “Mom” silently wept.
But the eyes she turned on me were full of hatred.
It was the first time she'd ever looked at me that way.
“Wasn't it...”
“Just an accident?”
“How could...”
For years, I'd believed Dad had died in an ordinary traffic accident.
Could he have deliberately killed them?
Impossible.
The father I remembered was a good man.
He'd treated everyone kindly.
Everyone said he was gentle and kindhearted.
Standing between them, I lowered my head and thought about what I'd heard.
I remembered what people had said about him.
Mom's love for him.
His smile when I was little.
The time he'd seen an old man selling tangerines by the road, bought the whole basket, and paid him extra.
The father in my memory was clearly a good person.
Someone that good could...
“What do you want?”
Thinking of that good father being tormented by this man even after death, I felt anger flare inside me.
I pushed aside my fear, raised my head, and looked straight at them.
My question was cold.
“Since you've come here yourself...”
“You might as well stay a few days.”