At 2 am, all was quiet. The city was deep in slumber. Chen Mo was jolted awake by a series of rapid knocks in this deathly silence. The sound, "Dong, dong, dong", was soft, yet it stood out starkly in this quiet night. It was as if someone was carefully rapping on the door panel with their knuckles, one tap after another, striking a chord in his heart.
He groggily fished out his phone from under the pillow. The cold light of the screen instantly illuminated the digital clock by the bedside - 11:50 pm. Chen Mo frowned, annoyance filling his heart. Who would come knocking at this late hour? "Who is it?" he croaked. His voice echoed in the empty room, but all that came in return was a deathly silence outside the door.
The corridor lights in the old residential building had been broken for a long time. Peering through the peephole, all he could see outside was thick, inky darkness. There was nothing visible. Chen Mo pressed his ear against the door and strained to listen. At this moment, a faint scraping sound reached his ears. The sound was like fingernails gently scratching across the wood grain, sending shivers down his spine.
"Crazy," he couldn't help but curse. He turned around, planning to go back to the bedroom and continue sleeping. But the moment he turned, he suddenly froze in place. Because there came the sound of dripping water from the kitchen.
"Tick."
The sound was extremely clear in the silent night, one drop after another, as if hitting his nerves. He clearly remembered turning off the faucet tightly before going to bed. How could there be the sound of water? With a heart full of doubts and a hint of unease, Chen Mo slowly made his way towards the kitchen. The moonlight filtered through the window and spilled onto the tiles. The water stains on the tiles glinted with an eerie silver light under the moonlight, snaking all the way to the refrigerator, like some mysterious guide.
Chen Mo reached out to feel for the light switch on the wall. The moment his fingertips touched the wall, he suddenly felt something wet and cold. Subconsciously, he looked down and was so startled that he almost cried out - it was long, black hair hanging down from the ceiling. The strands were damp, emitting a faint stench of decay.
"Ah!" He stumbled back in horror, his lower back hitting the dining table hard. A sharp pain shot through him, but at this moment, he couldn't care less. He looked up in a panic, only to find that the hair had disappeared, as if everything just now had been an illusion.
However, before he could catch his breath, his phone vibrated. He took out his phone with trembling hands and saw a text message from an unknown number. The content of the text was just a string of numbers: [23:55:59]
"A prank?" he mumbled to himself as he stared at the gradually dimming screen. But just then, he suddenly noticed that there was an extra person reflected in the phone screen.
Chen Mo's heart rate skyrocketed. He slowly raised his head and, through the reflection on the phone screen, saw a woman in white standing behind him with her head down. Her wet, long hair covered her entire face, making it impossible to see her features, but an eerie aura emanated from her.
Chen Mo spun around abruptly, wanting to see clearly. But there was no one beside the dining table. Only the "tick" sound of the dripping water, coming from who-knows-where, was particularly piercing in the silent night.
"Tick." Another drop of water fell from the faucet, as if reminding him that the danger was still ongoing.
Chen Mo couldn't take it anymore. He rushed into the bedroom in a panic, locked the door behind him, and leaned against the door, gasping for breath. Cold sweat had already soaked through his pajamas, making him shiver.
Before he could calm his nerves, the phone vibrated again. He picked it up with trembling hands, and a new text message popped up: [23:57:58]
Seeing this string of numbers, Chen Mo's face turned even paler. He realized that this wasn't a prank. This string of numbers was counting down, but he didn't dare to imagine what would happen when the countdown ended.
Just then, the wardrobe door creaked open. The sound was extremely eerie in the silent room, like someone was quietly opening the door to an unknown horror in the darkness. Chen Mo's nerves tensed up instantly. He grabbed the paper cutter on the table and held it tightly in his hand.
Black water seeped out from the crack of the wardrobe door. The black water carried a strong fishy smell, filling the air and making Chen Mo feel nauseous. "Come out!" he roared, trying to sound brave as he brandished the paper cutter and stabbed it into the wardrobe. However, the tip of the knife plunged into a wad of cotton wool. Looking closely, he saw that it was the suit he had dry-cleaned last week hanging inside.
Before Chen Mo could even breathe a sigh of relief, the phone started vibrating frantically on the mattress. The numbers displayed on the screen made his heart sink to the bottom again: [23:59:30]
Cold sweat kept trickling into his eyes, blurring his vision. He wiped his face haphazardly, but suddenly felt a strand of cold, wet hair. The hair seemed to have a life of its own. It was hanging down from the ceiling, and the tip had already wrapped around his neck, getting tighter and tighter, almost choking him.
Chen Mo struggled desperately. He waved the paper cutter and cut the hair, then fled through the door without hesitation. His shrill scream echoed in the corridor, carrying far into the darkness.
The elevator display showed a blood-red [4], standing out extremely vividly in the dark corridor. Chen Mo frantically pressed the button, his eyes fixed firmly on the elevator door, as if it was his only hope of escaping the horror.
Finally, the elevator door slowly opened. The moment the door opened, Chen Mo lunged inside without hesitation. The mirrored walls of the elevator reflected his paper-white face and... the woman in white lying on his back.
The woman's rotten, black hair coiled around his throat like a snake, making it impossible for him to breathe. Chen Mo struggled desperately, using both hands to try to pull the hair away, but the hair just tightened even more. The phone slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. The screen lit up, and the last text message flickered on the floor: [00:00:00]
Immediately afterwards, the elevator began to plummet rapidly. The whistling wind and Chen Mo's desperate screams filled his ears.
Early the next morning, the sun shone on the old residential building. Everything seemed to have returned to normal. However, the maintenance worker found a body at the bottom of the elevator shaft. The man's entire body had been shattered into more than seventy pieces, and his death was extremely tragic. But what sent chills down people's spines was that there was a neat circle of long hair wrapped around his neck, and at the end of the hair was a faded red string - exactly the same as the one on the wrist of the female tenant who hanged herself in Room 404 seven years ago.